Tim Sherwood ‘I’m 100% confident Aston Villa will stay in Premier League’

Tim Sherwood said that he was “100% confident” Aston Villa would remain in the Premier League this season and highlighted how much belief he had in his own ability to turn things around by predicting that the club’s supporters would be singing his name again in four weeks’ time.

Villa sit 18th in the table and head to Stamford Bridge on Saturday on the back of a dismal run in which they have taken only one point from their last seven matches. Sherwood’s position has come under close scrutiny, with the Villa hierarchy genuinely concerned about the club’s position, and the manager said that he was realistic enough to appreciate that he needed to win games to avoid the sack.

He claimed, however, that he had not been given any ultimatum to improve results and said that he was not concerned that neither Randy Lerner, the club’s owner, nor Tom Fox, the chief executive, had been in touch to give him any assurances.

“I take a lot of inspiration from managers I’ve seen who’ve worked through difficult periods, none more so than Alan Pardew,” Sherwood said. “Nine months ago they were screaming him out of town at Newcastle and if you asked anyone now who’s the favourite to be the next England manager when Roy’s had enough, it would be Alan Pardew and quite rightly so.

“He didn’t shrink like a violet, he stood tall, believed in what he believed in, and the people who are reaping the rewards now are Crystal Palace. So I take a lot of inspiration from guys like that, and that’s how quick this game can change around. Four weeks ago the crowd were singing my name at Leicester [when Villa were leading 2-0], they’ll be singing my name again in another four weeks.”Asked about reports saying he has two games to save his job, Sherwood replied: “I have no understanding of this, no one has spoke to me about two games. I am realistic enough to know that I’m a football manager who needs to win football matches and we haven’t done that. So if you don’t win games as a manager, you get sacked, that’s what happens.“I haven’t put a number [of games] on it. All I know is I’m a football manager and I take full responsibility for results. I’m not hiding in the background. I’m standing up there in that rectangle at the front of the pitch, taking the brunt of it, that’s what I get paid for.

“Every manager has difficult periods, this is my first difficult period, I’ll get through it. I know what I believe in, I’ll take everything on the chin and I’ll just soldier on, and we’ll turn it around. The objective of this season was to stay in the Premier League – 100% we’ll stay in the Premier League this season, I’ve got full belief in that. And then we would have reached our objective.”

Villa made 13 signings in the summer and the way in which those players were recruited has become a major talking point in the wake of the disappointing results. Hendrik Almstadt, the sporting director, and Paddy Riley, the director of scouting and player recruitment, were driving the process, and Sherwood was asked how many of the new faces he actually wanted.

“It doesn’t work like that,” he said. “I give them a group of players. It was a long list. There were more than 13, probably 30. They go away and see what is going to be feasible. You don’t always get what you want. But certainly every player who came in is a name I would have cast my eye over. Not a player has come in who I didn’t want.

“It was a case of first, second choices, but in the end you need to get someone in that position to balance out your squad. Not in every case. But in a lot of the cases you take what you can do as a club, whether that is age profile, whether it fits into the philosophy of what the club wants, whether it is finance. You take what you can and I work with it.“We lost a lot of players last season, three crucial players to how we wanted to play: Benteke, Tom Cleverley and Fabian Delph. Very instrumental, proven in the Premier League. It’s a big void to fill. We chose to go for a young group who we could build for the future. I believe we can. We’ve got to stop worrying about what we haven’t got at the football club, and let me decide what we have and what I can work with.”

After speaking about Villa being in transition and admitting that it would take time to click, Sherwood was asked whether Lerner or Fox had made contact with him to express their understanding. “No, no, they’ve said nothing to me,” Sherwood said. “It’s fine, it’s business as usual. They never said nothing to me last season either when it was going well, so it’s fine, no concern for me. I don’t want them singing from the rooftops when we’re in the cup final and I don’t want them screaming at me when we’re having a difficult time.”