Houllier On Lack Of Cutting Edge/Match Reaction

OK, lets make this as quick as possible, I`m sure we are all hurting today and have the away trip to Man City to focus on and worry about, anyone want to buy my ticket?!? I think I might face the opposite way to the pitch and create my own game!

Gerard Houllier has told www.avfc.co.uk Villa are lacking the cutting edge to win games. £££££ in January then.

He said 'It was disappointing result,' and then VERYworryingly, 'I think the first goal probably affected our morale a bit."

That should have been the time to start fighting surely? We`d started ok, there was plenty of time left in the game so..... gulp.

He also says once they went down to 10 men (wronly in my humble opinion) they knew Spurs would defend then look to break. They did that with aplomb for the second goal it has to be said.

'The second half was better. There was a reaction but we should have not conceded the second goal. We knew that the second goal was vital. Sometimes there were some situations in front of the goal where we could have scored. We lacked a bit of presence in front of the goal at times.'

GH also looked for the positives and points out the return of Villa captain Stiliyan Petrov and young Fabian Delph, who was a surprise started.

'Fabian was getting better and better as the game went on. There is no ideal time to start him. There are no games for the reserves at the moment because of the pitches. I wanted to give him 60 or 70 minutes and that was exactly the case so the good thing is he went through that. Afterwards I took him off because I didn't want him to get a hamstring injury or something like that.'

Meanwhile Petrov told Dan Harrison on the Official Site it was great to be back but he was disappointed with the result.

'We got plenty of chances, we put pressure on them, we took the game to them in their half and then all of a sudden we see the ball in the back of our net which is not pleasant. It was the same story in the second-half and that was our strongest point before - we kept clean sheets and gave ourselves a chance to win a game. So far we are not doing it this season and that is costing us points.'

Match stats: Click Here
Match report: Click Here
Gerard Houlliers post match verdict on AVTV: Click Here

Click here to join in the debate on the club forum.