“Big Improvement” - Smith Dismisses Fan Fantasy As He Demands More From His Villa Squad

It’s been a wobbly time of late for Aston Villa with mixed form, performance levels and results but last weekend’s tough draw with Brighton and Hove Albion at least edged the five game form guide in our favour with two wins, two defeats and a draw – it doesn’t get any easier this Sunday though as we welcome Brendan Rodgers’ Leicester City side to Villa Park.

Leicester are in good form themselves sitting third in the table, but despite recent struggles, we should in no way underplay just how surprising a season that has been for us. The fact fans are disappointed that we are only in eighth place in the table, and not at least five/six points higher, shows you have much improvement we have made on our 2019/20 efforts.

Vital Villa’s Leicester Match Thread

Fans are understandably continuing to talk about a potential European adventure given how our expectations have risen over the months, but rightly, head coach Dean Smith is refusing to entertain those thoughts, knowing if we want to achieve that, we have to be a hell of a lot better than we have been since the turn of the year.

With eyes turning to Leicester, Smith was speaking to the Express and Star this week and fans should again be pleased with his focus on improvement and not talking fluff about Europe at this stage.

“We are not even thinking about that. There is a big improvement we have to make on Saturday’s performance. We had a week’s training last week instead of playing a midweek game. I thought we would come out of the traps firing and we didn’t. We are not even thinking about the league table, just concentrating on what we have to do to improve our next performance.”

We weren’t good enough against Brighton and there’s no getting away from that, so until we do find our groove again, fans can talk about Europe as a much hoped for fantasy as much as they want, but there should be no acknowledgement from Smith until we improve again.