‘West Ham are the only ones’ says Jamie Carragher as he named the four teams he believes are in true relegation danger this season.
The Premier League battle for survival promises to be one of the most closely contested for years and involves as many as eight teams this season.
West Ham are right in the thick of it at the moment, sitting in 17th place, just one point above the bottom three.
As a result David Moyes has found himself under pressure to keep the Hammers job but remains in the hotseat.
As things stand Southampton prop up the Premier League table with Bournemouth and Everton making up the bottom three.
Then come West Ham with Leeds, Wolves, Leicester, Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace above them.
Many fans and pundits feel the relegation battle is, as things stand, between those nine clubs with Palace in 12th only six points above Everton in the relegation zone.
After being relegated with what remains a Prem record 42 points with a fantastic team – on paper at least – West Ham fans are too long in the tooth to believe they are ‘too good to go down’.
That is being applied to the likes of Leicester, Wolves and Leeds too while Forest have given themselves some breathing space with recent results.
West Ham are perhaps the biggest underachievers this season, though. The Hammers have gone from sixth and seventh place finishes in the last two seasons – with last 16 European football to boot – to battling for their very survival in the division.
The current bottom five of Leeds, West Ham, Everton, Bournemouth and Southampton are not even halfway to the magic 40-point mark with over half the season played.
So many would feel they will be the teams most likely to be fighting to beat the drop until the bitter end.
But not Jamie Carragher.
Speaking on The Overlap Fan Debate, the Sky Sports pundit did not even mention West Ham being in the shake-up for demotion come what May.
‘West Ham are the only ones’ Carragher said as he named the four teams he believes are in true relegation danger.
‘West Ham are the only ones’ Jamie Carragher names the four teams he believes are in true relegation danger
Carragher points out that the Hammers are the only club in the bottom six to have stuck by their manager.
And he clearly believes West Ham’s quality and sticking with Moyes will count for a lot as he says Southampton and Bournemouth will go down with Everton and Leeds battling it out to avoid filling the final relegation slot.
“Out of the bottom six or seven I think West Ham are the only ones who haven’t changed their manager,” Carragher said on The Overlap Fan Debate.
“Obviously David Moyes has done a great job the last few years so you’d expect that. But it just shows the stakes, how high they are in terms of staying in the Premier League (and) it probably looks like Southampton are going to change their manager again, probably in the next couple of weeks…
“I think Forest will be ok, they’ve got that buffer now… I think Southampton and Bournemouth are going to go down. I think if Everton hadn’t changed manager I think they would have been in big trouble but I think it’ll be down to Everton and Leeds. I think it will be a toss up between the two.”
Super computer boffins recently predicted West Ham would stay up this season with 42 points for a 14th place finish – eight points above the bottom three.
That computer verdict also predicts that Everton, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest will drop.
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