Aston Villa boss Steven Gerrard detailed key issues and took responsibility after our 1-0 defeat to Watford.
Villa have now suffered back-to-back losses in the Premier League and have failed to score in our last two outings, which in turn has raised concern over our form as we await a positive response to get back on track.
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While we undoubtedly expected a reaction after the woeful performance at Newcastle Utd, it only really lasted around 20 minutes before Villa started to struggle with a lack of ideas, thus opening the door for Watford to grow into the game and become a real threat on the counter attack.
Speaking after the game, Gerrard noted that his Villa side needs to do more with so much possession, and he’ll no doubt be expecting a more positive result next time out when we travel to Brighton Saturday.
“Our quality in the final third,” Gerrard said when asked what was the most disappointing aspect of the loss, as per the club’s official site. “We’ve had 60% of the ball and got into the right areas a lot today, but we’ve only had one shot on target. Ben Foster hasn’t been troubled anywhere near enough.
“We’re at home, we need to be more exciting than that, we need to create more and score more. We knew that they’d carry a threat on the counter-attack, so we’re not surprised by what Watford brought to the game. This is very much on me and us. We need to improve fast.
“We’ve played three teams below us in the last three games and we’ve taken one point, that’s not good enough. That’s on me. I realise that things need to change, we need to improve and we need to do it fast. We have to face the music and move on.”
It’s becoming a real test of Gerrard now in terms of what changes and tweaks he can make both to his team and system to ensure we’re on a more solid footing defensively and a more threatening attack going forward.
While the expectation was that he would make more than one switch to his starting XI this past weekend, the fact that he gave certain individuals a chance to bounce back and prove their quality in this game and they came up short again, would suggest that he is going to make bigger changes next time out.
Time will tell if that’s the case or not, but Villa need to get back to winning ways as soon as possible, as ultimately another poor result at the weekend will continue to drain the confidence and belief out of the players and lead to further struggles.