Man-of-the-match On Fight For Places

Martin Laursen says the pressure is on the defenders following the arrival of Zat Knight from Fulham and Curtis Davies from WBA.

The towering Danish international defender who was man-of-the-match v Chelsea said:

'I face a real fight for my place in the side. You might say it will be hard for Curtis to get into the team after that, but it is going to be hard for me to get into the team as well. It is great competition now to play centre-half so we will see. This is the first win against one of the four big sides since I came to the club. I haven't seen Villa win until this one so I am very happy for this result. It is something we have aimed for for a long time, to get a result against one of the four big sides and we played as well as Chelsea and to get three points is amazing. I think we played really well, a great attitude.'

He seemed quite emotional when interviewed after the game, after all it was only last month he was saying Villa have to start beating the 'big' teams and now we have one of the biggest scalps to boost the confidence of the team!

He also spoke of debut boy Zat, 'What a debut, he scored and a clean sheet. I think he will have a glass of red wine to celebrate. I don't know about his private life. All I can say is he did really well yesterday. It must have been difficult for him to join the club in the week and then play the first game against Chelsea.'

And Zat said after his goal winning debut, 'Hopefully there's plenty more to come from me and from the team.'

He told the official site following a very strange week, 'Everyone knows it was an up and down week for me, but that was a brilliant way to round it off - with a clean-sheet and a debut goal. I could never have dreamt of a debut like that - against a top team like Chelsea. To go into that game after the week that I've had, it was great for me to get some good headlines.'

Adding 'I felt settled in the defence and hopefully there's a lot more clean-sheets to come from us this season.'

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