We dominated for large parts but we were not ruthless enough, proclaims Steven Gerrard
Steven Gerrard
|In light of their 1-0 loss, Aston Villa boss Steven Gerrard believes that while his team dominated large parts of the game, they weren’t ruthless enough to make their dominance pay. The Villians lost 1-0 to Manchester United in their third-round FA Cup clash with two goals disallowed by VAR.
Ever since Steven Gerrard took over at Aston Villa, the change in performances has been very evident with the former Rangers boss doing shockingly well. However, Villa have fallen short over their last few league games with them winning just one out of the last four. That includes back to back losses as well but even then more than a few fans were hopeful of a win over Manchester United.
Yet things didn’t go according to plan as while United scored early in the first half, the second half saw Aston Villa cause nothing but problems although they walked away without a single goal. It meant that the Villa have lost their last seven FA Cup games and Steven Gerrard admitted that it’s a tough loss to swallow. He also added that they needed to be more ruthless during their dominant spell and believes that there was enough in the performance to know how far Villa can go.
"It's very tough. We are out of the FA Cup and coming into this job I saw this competition as an opportunity to have a good run in it. The lads gave a lot in terms of performance but we need to learn and close the gap from a performance that was nearly good enough. We dominated for large parts but we were not ruthless enough,” Gerrard said, reported Sky Sports.
"I've seen enough tonight in terms of the performance to know that I can get to where I want to get to but we need to learn and learn quickly. We need to be more ruthless moving forward, defending crosses we need to be tighter. We cannot be having people with free headers in our six yard box. It is quite clear what we need to iron out and we will do it in the short term."
However, Villa’s dominant spell did see them hit the net not once but twice although both goals were ruled out via VAR with them taking more than three minutes to rule out Danny Ings’ equaliser. That, more than anything, had Gerrard very frustrated but he admitted that the Villians can’t blame the officials and need to move on.
"How long have you got? The officials took three and a half minutes to settle that one. They have looked at two or three things in it. When VAR is there and they make a decision you have to accept it. There is nothing you can do to change it. The easy way out is to blame luck and the officials, we won't do that,” he added.
