Aston Villa are again looking over their shoulders after the 3-1 loss to Manchester United at Old Trafford -- the fourth defeat of manager Tim Sherwood's reign.
The Midlanders are three points from the relegation zone ahead of Tuesday's crunch home game against QPR and will be fourth from bottom if Sunderland beat Newcastle on Sunday.
Sherwood was not too unhappy with his team's efforts, but he was disappointed that they fell behind to an Ander Herrera strike only one minute before the break.
"There's never a good time to concede a goal, but that first goal knocked the stuffing out of us before half-time," the Villa boss said.
"But we never panicked and we kept ourselves in the game. We did that right until injury-time when the third goal killed us.
"I thought we stuck in there. We were always in the game until the third goal killed us off.
"We were just waiting for a break. We thought we might have one more chance in us.
"They left nothing on the pitch. But Manchester United were too good for us.''
After Wayne Rooney had put United 2-0 up in spectacular fashion, a rare David De Gea mistake allowed Christian Benteke to pull one back, but a second from Herrera settled the result.
Ashley Westwood and Scott Sinclair were ruled out through hamstring injuries and are not expected to be fit for the QPR game.
Alan Hutton is also a doubt after suffering an ankle injury at Old Trafford, and Sherwood said: The injuries are crippling, ridiculously crippling."