The Athletic

I'm going to be honest I think it probably should have been done weeks ago

I think they've sat on the Hans Villa it was only ever going one way

I think you could tell early days this season that Stephen Gerrard was not going to get it

right I don't think we'll see him play from Manchester United ever again

I mean it's only just over a year ago that he returned to the club with massive jubilation.

I think the fact that the United fans now, to a man, don't really care. That's probably the last year. We'll see him. Rinaldo sums up his behaviour over the last year. This guy's a serial, serial winner and Spurs are not serial winners. Yes, they've got some players in the squad who have been, but trying to change that around is not going to be quick

and I just wonder, is he here for the three, four years? It's a total mess, to be honest. If I was a Wolves fan, I'd be absolutely livid. Diego Costa, it's quite sad, really. He's basically playing this pantomime role for Wolves, where, you know, wolves are happy to sort of tweet out the mischief he's getting to during games but if you actually watch him sort of lumbering around the pitch

it's pretty sad to see that he just can't see do the things that he used to be able to do in his

career other than just elbow people in the guts

Hello and welcome for the Athletic Football Podcast

I'm Dan Bardell and this is the weekend preview

I'm joined as ever by George Ellick, Bet365 Steve Freeth and the Athletics Tim Spears.

Coming up today, we're going to look ahead to Liverpool's visit to Nottingham Forest.

Manchester City looking to respond to their first defeat of the season at home to Brighton,

plus Chelsea take on Manchester United and down at the bottom, Wolves v Leicester,

in the battle to survive. But before that, we've got to talk about the big story of the last 24

hours as on Thursday night, Aston Villa sacked their manager Stephen Gerard after a 3-0 defeat

to Fulham at Craven Cottage.

...breaking news from the Premier League. Stephen Gerard is no longer the head coach at Aston Villa. The club themselves have put a statement. So Tim, we were both there last night watching the game. You in the press box, me in the away end, absolutely ripping my hair out. Another totally abject performance from Aston Villa, and it turned out it was Stephen Gerrard's last game in charge at the club. Yeah, and it felt completely inevitable with the way the game unraveled. I mean, Villa could

legitimately have been four or five down by half time. Fulham were a class apart. Villa were

just making mistakes after mistake. I've seen them a few times a season. I don't know what

...