Martin O'Neill Admits Chelsea Were 'Brilliant'

Martin O'Neill admitted after the 2-0 defeat to Chelsea that the opponents were simply brilliant.

He said on AVTV:

'We shouldn't take anything away from Chelsea. Sometimes you are only as good as the team you're playing lets you. They were very strong, very quick, athletic and agile. They were absolutely brilliant. They are a class side. From our point of view, it was frustrating that we couldn't get our good players into the game. What you need at places like this is the lads performing at the levels they have in recent games but we couldn't today.'

Adding, 'We needed to play well to pick up something but we couldn't manage that. We had a little spell just after half-time where we came back into the match but we needed to score at that point. Unfortunately, we didn't and Chelsea ended up winning comfortably. The game has been built up because we have been doing quite well. People were talking about whether we could break into the top four. I'm sure tomorrow morning, we'll be told we can't do that. That's no bad thing because we know the distance we have to go.'

The comments on the Tom Ross/Pat Heard commentary were that Chelsea won the game with ease and no bruises and some of our players were ball watching instead of getting stuck in. They were there, I wasn't! Unfortunately we've not got our great away match reporter Glensider to educate us of the facts this week, if anyone else was there and would be so kind as to submit a match report, please email me or pm me. (Just click the letter icon by my name in the editor details or send to astonvilla@vitalfootball.co.uk)

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