Smith: Villa ‘unlucky’ to lose ‘average’ game
Aston Villa deserved more against Wolves, claimed Dean Smith, but they need more “quality” in attack.
Villa slipped to a 1-0 defeat to Wolves in their fourth game in 11 days. The result keeps Smith’s side in the relegation zone.
Had Villa managed a draw, though, they would have risen out of the drop zone for the time being. And that’s exactly the result Smith though they deserved.
“We are disappointed, it was a nothing game,” he told BT Sport. “I thought it was an average game with defence on top, the sort you expect to finish 0-0.
“It was the sort of game you’d expect having played four games in 11 days. I thought we more than matched a top six team and we were unlucky to lose the game.
“There’s no tougher games than Wolves, we’ve seen them doing it on all fronts this season – in the league and in Europe.
“Going back, the scheduling four games in 11 days, you are always going to get injuries, errors and fatigue because of that. I thought it was an average game because of that.
“We’re the only team to do four days in 11 days, so thank you very much for that.”
It was the second time in their four games since the re-start that Villa have failed to score. Smith admits that quality in the final third is a problem – especially against teams with a defensive structure as solid as Wolves’.
“It’s tough, not many teams have got much out of Wolves this season – you’re asking a lot out of the front three against their back five.
“We certainly needed more quality in the final third, that’s for sure. There were no real clear cut chances apart from Orjan Nyland throwing into the ground and Diogo Jota putting it over the bar.
“We’ve planned for the [upcoming] games, we are coming up with plans for each game. Since the restart each game has gone how I expected it to, in terms of how it played out, we should certainly have more points out of these four games because we haven’t been bad in them.
“It’s disappointing, it was an opportunity today and unfortunately they’ve scored.”