Premier League Regulation 2013/14.

Eight points currently between 10th and 20th, and it's clearly three from any of the current bottom half placed teams that will be the one's to go.

Everyone's perspective of who those three will be are different. Teams out of form, teams in form, the positive and negative bias of your own team.

Interesting that my Hull supporting mate text after the game yesterday and essentially claimed we'd both had a great result and would be playing in the Prem again next year. Of course, one result doth not safety make... but his view is that we're both playing well enough to stay up. And yes, he's seen us play live twice (admittedly against Hull) this year!

A few weeks ago, Sunderland and Palace were nailed on. Currently I'd say Fulham are the only ones nailed on. However with it being so tight, things can change very quickly, even with a half decent run.

I think though, the answer to regulation this year is which three teams are most in decline. Which three are going backwards? Sure Norwich haven't improved, but take away thoughts of negative tactics/management issues, are we in decline? Are we heading backwards?

I'd observe that Fulham, like Wigan, have been in slow decline for a while. For me, they will be one of the three to go. West Brom too have hit the slippery slope, even though Steve Clarke halted the slide for a while. Not sure Pepe Mel has the time and PL experience to turn around the Baggies decline, so for me that's two gone.

As for the final spot, which other team is most in decline... hit the ceiling and are drifting back down again? Cardiff have un-necessarily changed managers and brought about their own downfall from a stable position. They've added a lot of players in the Jan transfer window, almost to the extent QPR did last year. For me, they're looking precarious to say the least. But I'm going to plump for Villa to take the third rele spot. They can't seem to buy a win at home, and their overall decline has been apparent from the Randy Lerner era. They've been enduring a slow-lingering death for a few seasons now. Their downfall has been a big club with a great history trying to keep up with the game's big guns. They don't have the financial muscle to do that, and no-one at Villa Park would dare re-adjust their sites on settling for mid-table mediocrity. A tweet for BBC Midlands correspondent Pat Murphy yesterday said it all... "@patmurphybbc: These days only time when @AVFCOfficial look together as a unit at VPark is during that ridiculous pre-match huddle.What do they talk about?" So for their lack of more realistic ambitions of where they should be, for me, sees them going down too!

Too many words.

Posted By: Jim Nasium, Feb 9, 14:22:03