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“Harsh Lesson” – But Smith Remains Positive As Villa Continue Searching For Points

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Aston Villa were back in Premier League action today as we welcomed Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth side to Villa Park.

Head coach Dean Smith would’ve been searching for further improvement given what we saw from our opening day performance against Tottenham Hotspur, and all fans were hoping to see us register our first three points of the year.

It was a horrific opening 12 minutes as two mistakes saw us suitably punished at 2-0 to the visitors, and whilst things clearly need to be better and sharper still, there were better positives from some players like Wesley, and after an early mistake, Douglas Luiz deserved his goal for his efforts.

We had chances to take the win, but were wasteful. Back to Bodymoor Heath as there’s plenty of work still to be done, but we were arguably better than against Spurs, so at least we’re slowly going in the right direction.

Speaking to the BBC following the full time whistle, Smith said of the showing.

“We made two big mistakes, they had two goals in 10 minutes and it’s difficult to come back from that in this league. You’re always chasing at 2-0 and it allows them to slow it down and kill the game a little bit. We kept trying, I felt John McGinn drove the game forward. He had a couple of chances in the first half and we got the goal through Douglas but we have to be better in possession, and its a harsh lesson. Losing the game is harsh on us. We created chances but we have got to take them – they took their chances and we didn’t. I’m not disappointed in the way we’ve played, I’m just disappointed in the result. Sometimes performances don’t get results.”

He also admitted that we basically lost the match ‘due to ourselves’ and I’d imagine most fans will agree.

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