I agree, survival is target every year. Problem we have is over spending on wage bill to survive so not sustainable. I think we are 9th or 10th highest wage bill so if that is the measure we are underperforming.

This year we reached practical safety quite early, certainly after Bournemouth game and the rest is plain to see in the results.

Players are in job done mode

Responsibility Deficit Disorder is a medical condition. Symptoms include inability to be corrected when wrong, false sense of superiority, desire to share personal info no else cares about, general hubris. It's a medical issue rather than pure arrogance.

I just think we're all worried that there won't be investment. If we keep the exact same squad now (unlikely we won't lose anyone), they'll all be a year older and nearly every player that started against Villa were over 30.

The more likelihood is we sell Zaha but remember the only silver lining to losing Wan-Bissaka being £55 million? Yeah, where did that money go? If we sell Zaha for £70 million (we won't, it'll be closer to 50), then we won't spend it on the ageing squad.

Townsend will come in for Zaha and we will have even less of an impact from the bench.

It's not that 42 points after 35 games is under expectation, it's pretty much bang on the money but we have rinsed the sponge dry now. It's evident.

This squad and Manager are all past the sell-by-date and they have done tremendously well to have one final hurrah that didn't even last a whole season, it just got us to 42 points with minimal fuss. You can see now they are blowing out their backside and this won't improve with an end-of-season break because they are all over 30.

What's infuriating, is we are looking at losing our remaining 8 games anyway, if that's the case, play several youngsters that may or may not be good enough for Premier League football and there's a chance we unearth 1 or more Wan-Bissaka's. We can't get Europe anymore and we aren't going down, yet we aren't planning for next season with the Academy and it blows my mind.

Worst that can happen is Roy is proven right, none of our Youngsters are quality. If that's the case we know we need to buy at least 1 young signing for every position on the pitch in the Summer. If one of the Academy proves Roy wrong, we've saved millions for next season. It's a no brainer.

I believe it supplemented the high player wages so we could still report we're in the black and looking good for FFP.

If you had offered most of us 42 points before the season began then we would have torn the proverbial hand off!
However - regardless of who we have played - to still have 42 points - and as I posted elsewhere a few weeks ago we will probably finish on 42 pts - is very disappointing - a real damp squib and not looking good for the season ahead.
We overachieved at times earlier in the season but have seriously underachieved these last few games - bar Chelsea.

If you check back, it's actually exactly the same as last season at this stage.However, we then won 2 of the last 3 games and drew the other - unlikely that will happen this season.
Re the AWB money mentioned in an earlier post, my understanding was that part of it was used to fund the Academy development and also pay back loans from the owners. As Parish has indicated, we went into the Covid situation - with a likely loss of significant income - in a decent financial position