Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini has conceded the Premier League title to bitter rivals Manchester United who hold a 15-point gap with nine matches remaining.The Italian did the same thing last season when United looked to be running away with the title and we all know what happened as City pipped United to the title in one of the most exciting finishes to a title race in England ever. But you get the feeling the gap is too big for City to close this time and that Mancini really has conceded.However, there is still much to play for in the last few weeks of the season, the top four places for Champions League qualification, the bottom three relegation spots, the FA Cup which is at the semi-final stage and the Champions League itself, at the quarter-finals. Much of the interest in England now involves the battle to avoid relegation where any three from the bottom eight — Newcastle down to Queens Park Rangers — could go down.There have been four Premier League managers fired this season and three of them were with teams now in the bottom five places in the standings. Nigel Adkins, who was recently fired by Southampton, was this week appointed the new manager of Reading who sacked Brian McDermott. Now the question will be can he keep Reading, second from bottom, in the Premier League, maybe even at the expense of his former club who are still very much in a battle for survival.Mangers getting fired is a common thing in football and you’ve got to remember there are no certainties and you are paid to win games and if your team is not winning unfortunately the manager is always the one to take the brunt. That’s just the nature of the game, and you have owners today who just don’t have the patience, especially the foreign owners.They want instant success and sometimes you can’t get instant success, you have to work at it. You feel sorry for the people who have lost their jobs because you don’t want to see anybody have to go through that, but that is just the nature of the beast.I’m never surprised in this game because I’ve see it many, many times before. What people have to realise is you are judged on results and if results don’t go your way you get fired. It’s a bit like a gambler, when you are winning everything is fine, but the moment you start losing you are in big trouble.The manager who you really have to think can pull his team out of the bottom three is Roberto Martinez of Wigan because they have done it for the last three or four years. He’s a class fella and what you have to admire about him is his team plays good football. The second thing you have to applaud him for is his loyalty to the club who don’t have nearly the money that the other clubs have but every year he is able to keep them in the Premier Division. He’s done a fantastic job there and you like to see people like him succeed.He seems like a very nice fella, he’s from Spain but has been in England for a long time and understands the mentality. He’s my manager of the year and this year he has taken Wigan into the semi-finals of the FA Cup.I think the bottom two, Queens Park and Reading, are both in trouble but their managers know they are going to be in a dogfight and will just have to work hard.My team, West Ham, are going to be in there fighting too, and that’s what they will need to do at this stage of the season, roll your sleeves up and give it all you’ve got. You don’t want to have to go down a division and then have to dig yourselves out again.It’s not about playing pretty football at this stage of the season but getting results to stay up. West Ham and Newcastle are both on 33 points and with safety likely to be the 40-point mark those two teams probably need another two wins to be reasonably safe. If that’s the case then Sunderland, Southampton and Aston Villa, the three teams just above the relegation zone — and two and three points behind West Ham and Newcastle — still have a bit of work to do in the last eight games of the season.A club like Villa, who have stood by their manager Paul Lambert, needs to get results on a regular basis and be consistent. With all the teams in the lower section of the division, what has let them down is inconsistency all season. Lambert left Norwich to manage Villa at the beginning of the season but bigger is not always better. Same thing with Brendan Rodgers who left Swansea for the challenge of managing Liverpool this season yet a new manager, Michael Laudrup, comes in and takes Swansea to Capital One Cup success.This is an interesting stage of the season and the teams that want to stay are the teams that will stay up. There is no room for weak players, you want people who are going to give you 200 percent. I just hope my guys can do it, we are going to the big stadium, the Olympic Stadium, and you don’t want to be at the big stadium playing in the lower division.West Brom are our opponents on Saturday and they won’t be an easy team to roll over. We got a point at West Brom earlier in the season and were unlucky not to get three.