Paul Lambert: Aston Villa won't need 40 points to secure survival

Boss Paul Lambert today challenged Villa to finally secure their Premier League place and insisted they will need less than 40 points to survive.

Villa are still in danger after Saturday's 4-1 defeat to Manchester United left them 12th. They host rock-bottom Fulham on Saturday before going to struggling Crystal Palace.

And Lambert insisted he doesn't believe Villa need to hit the recognised benchmark for survival to stay up.

"I don't think it will take 40 points this year," he said, with Villa eight points above the bottom three with seven games left. "If you look at the fixtures everybody's got, it's really tough."

and you just go and try and win the next game and see what happens.

"You try and do it as quickly as you can, get over that line. We've got another big game next week. I'm not sure what it will take but I don't think 40 will be the limit."

The Old Trafford loss was the second straight 4-1 defeat after the capitulation at home to Stoke inflicted Villa's biggest league reverse of the season.

Ashley Westwood had fired Villa ahead but two Wayne Rooney goals, along with strikes from Juan Mata and Javier Hernandez won it for United.

Despite shipping four again Lambert refused to change his gameplan and insisted they will still attack.

He said: "The first one I think is particularly poor from our point of view, the penalty I've got no qualms about, the third one is a ricochet and bad fortune has gone against us.

"But United was a million miles away from the performance against Stoke and we had chances to get a good result.

"Over the course of this season we haven't conceded too many and the last couple of games we have. On the attacking side our performance was night and day from last week.

"We can't play any other way, we've got to try and play that way. I'd rather go there and try to attack rather than just waiting for something to happen. On another day we might have got something."