They've always done it with a change of manager. No way Gollum keeps them up.
I think a lot of it also has to do about how their rivals are set up:
- Swansea have a good squad and with Paul Clement a very good manager, but they need to get the points now because I don't know if they have the steel needed for relegation dogfights from Matchday 33 onwards.
- Leicester have a good squad and with Ranieri an experienced manager, that said he might not be there for much longer. Leicester definitely should survive, but at the moment the players are in such a rut they find ways to lose games they should win. A shakeup of management set-up might just do the trick though.
- Crystal Palace have probably the best squad from all the relegation scrappers, they should be comfortably in midtable. With Allardici they have one of the most successful relegation battle managers.
- Hull City have probably the weakest squad, but have new life under their new manager. But that might be short-lived, I personally think that after their purple patch of form they will smack back to earth, and hard. I see them going down for sure.
- Middlesborough have a weak squad, but have grinded out wins by a dogged defence. The question for them is: who scores the goals? There might be more 0-0 draws on the horizon for them and as soon as they actually do concede, they lose. The next match vs Crystal Palace is already very important. Aitor Karanka doesn't have the PL experience of other relegation battlers and as mentioned before no goalscorers. I can see them going down, especially if they don't fix their impotency in front of goal.
- Bournemouth have their problems at the moment, but I think there are enough goals in their team to get some wins which will put them to safety. They have to fix their defence and I think with Howe they have a decent enough manager to just survive.
Which leaves us with Sunderland: I'd say they have the second weakest squad (better than Hull, worse than Middlesborough), but to their great advantage have a proven goalscorer and an experienced manager. For me they have to fix the consistency in their defending, then they can survive. In the last five games they have conceded 9, while getting two cleansheets. Considering their rivals for relegation, I think they will drop this time around... Leicester, Bournemouth, Crystal Palace and Swansea have better players, better systems and have a better management set-up.
