Skip to content

Gary Neville on tough times for Liverpool, Tottenham and Aston Villa

The players are back in training, the transfer rumour mill is in full swing and the Sky Sports live fixtures have been announced...

Gary on Aston Villa's relegation fears One thing I found in the first year of doing Monday Night Football - I was a bit naïve to be fair - was that I stood up there every Monday night and made an absolute fool of myself when I tried to pick relegation. I remember thinking Wigan were gone with 10 games to go in the year before last, but they went on an incredible run. Last year, because of the incredible run the year before you almost thought Wigan would get out of it - but they ended up going down. You can really look a fool in terms of relegation. I think the interesting club to look at, for me, is Aston Villa. Everybody will have seen the Benteke news and the fact he's put in a transfer request. Obviously it's a team game and a squad game, but his impact on them staying up last year was enormous. I know he was supported by Gabriel Agbonlahor, Charles N'Zogbia and Andy Weimann towards the end and they really were a threat on the counter-attack with their pace up front, but I think this year you wouldn't want to see Aston Villa scrambling around again. That's a really interesting one in terms of how they cope with the Benteke situation. Last year it was close for them and now they've got their star player asking for a transfer. They are the interesting one in this early part of pre-season.

Around Sky