Martin O’Neill On Villa v Blades

Martin O’Neill has reacted to the great battle and 2-2 draw against Sheffield United last night.

He told the official site after the game:

‘We should have been out of sight by half-time. It was some game. We got ourselves a goal in front and could have been two, three, four-up and out of sight. But we weren’t able to nail it. We went in at half-time 1-0 up and absolutely in control of the game. But at just 1-0, you’re never in control of the game and we knew we would have to withstand a big barrage – especially from set-pieces – and we didn’t deal with that. Consequently we went from 1-0 up to 2-1 down and then had to rely on another brilliant goal to get something from the game.’

‘Creatively we were excellent and there were many great things to take out from the game. We’ve gone away from home and scored two goals again, but obviously we’ll have to do better on defending the set-pieces. There were many pleasing things in the game. This is a very difficult place to come to and going forward, especially in the first-half, I thought we did very well.’

And on the scorers he said: ‘It was great to se Stiliyan get his first goal for us. You could see immediately it was like a weight lifted off his shoulders. He then proceeded to play probably the best half I’ve seen any midfielder play this season. He was brilliant. Milan will be boosted by the goal. I’ve said before that all strikers get a confidence boost from any goal and that will have done Milan the world of good.’