A nadir

Watching that game felt like a nadir. Booed off by another superb away support, Gerrard is a dead man walking.

Those players were not playing for their manager. Sadly that means, naturally, they were not playing for their shirt. That hardly makes happy watching or reading for any Villa fan.

Yet the (over)-aggressive nature of some of their games - Konsa, McGinn, Luiz, Ramsey especially - suggested that at least some of the players recognised this dichotomy and compensated through excessive commitment to the tackle.

Gerrard’s reign is clearly over. It is just a question now of when NSWE act, for you can guarantee it won't be Purslow. Chelsea is likely to be a get out of jail card whilst Brentford and Fulham have just become the next Leicester-Southampton-Forest delete as applicable break point in the seemingly never ending grace period Gerrard is being gifted.

Don’t be fooled though, there is no turnaround in this story.

We said at the start of the latest run of games that we felt there were 15 winnable points through the five games to the Brentford match.

Two games into that run and we have two points from a possible six against relegation battle certs.

Next up comes Chelsea, realistically now that looks unlikely to deliver points as the man NSWE wanted as manager is already working his magic on the West London side.

That leaves us with just six points to win from another brace of games against relegation battle certs.

So turn 5 into four and we have taken just two points from a possible six against relegation rivals.

A repeat of that again against Fulham and Brentford and we might as well resign ourselves to the fate to come.

It is never too early to end a failed experiment, it is always too late to stubbornly hold on to pride.