Football: Survival on minds of both sides

Aston Villa's Ciaran Clark, left, clears the ball away from Manchester United's Marouane Fellaini as Jores Okore looks on during the match against Manchester United. Photo / AP

Aston Villa have an FA Cup semifinal looming at Wembley in 12 days' time but for Tim Sherwood, the most important game of their season takes place when Queen's Park Rangers visit for a fixture crucial to both sides' English Premier League survival prospects.

Sherwood spelled out the importance of a match that pits him against Chris Ramsey, his long-time coaching colleague at Tottenham Hotspur and now manager of Rangers, when describing it as "the biggest" of his managerial career.

Villa would drop below QPR - three points worse off - into the relegation zone if they were to lose, which would be the last scenario Sherwood would want going into Sunday's return to White Hart Lane. A victory, by contrast, would lift the Birmingham side two places to 15th and open up a five-point cushion on the bottom three.

"This is without doubt the biggest game of the season for Villa and possibly one of the biggest in a number of years," said Sherwood, who also suggested some of his players needed to "man up".

"If you look through QPR's squad they have a lot of players who are men with a lot of experience in there," he said. "I think we have a few men in there but we have a lot of players who are pretty much icing-on-the-cake players. I am trying to get that mentality into them to start digging out results, which is not what we're cut out to do."

In truth, Sherwood has had an up-and-down time since replacing Lambert: back-to-back defeats against Swansea City and Manchester United mean he has lost four of six League fixtures so far.

"Tim Sherwood never came in here with a magic wand," said the 46-year-old of himself.

What gives the contest extra intrigue is the close relationship between the two managers. Although Sherwood joked that he had been ignoring Ramsey's calls - "I keep red-buttoning him!" - he went on to praise the coaching skills he saw at first hand in Tottenham's academy and later first team during his time as manager last season.

"He's had a lot of his years developing younger players," he said, "and now he has got a taste of being a manager and is really enjoying it, especially when you get results like on Saturday and [against] Sunderland away. You are talking about a team who hadn't won away from home all season." Generous words, but Sherwood cannot afford a repeat today.