Aston Villa manager Paul Lambert believes that the fight for Premier League survival has blown wide open following their win over Reading.

The Midlands outfit snatched a 2-1 victory on Saturday, placing them three points away from Wigan Athletic, who are third-from-bottom in the table.

"What our win does is bring teams above us into it as well," ESPN quotes Lambert as saying. "If you look up to 12th or 13th place, there's not much in it and there's still nine games to go. There are still big games to come.

"I think there will be a lot of changes throughout the coming games. We've pulled a lot of teams back into it and we're playing well at the minute, so I'm extremely happy with that. We have momentum.

"I've looked at everybody's fixtures and there's so many hard games coming up, including the ones we've got ourselves, but we've put ourselves in a position where we're in a fight with seven or eight other teams."

Reading and Queens Park Rangers sit in the bottom three, while Southampton and Sunderland are placed above Villa in 16th and 15th spot respectively.