Martin O’Neill – We Paid The Price

Wrong again, well 81% were wrong in our prediction poll. They all said we’d win. 6% predicted a loss and the remaining 13% got it bang on the money predicting a draw.

Martin O’Neill said about the low quality but incident filled game

‘We paid the price for failing to convert our chances.’ adding ‘We should have won that. Wigan didn’t buckle and that’s credit to them. We had a number of chances to have won the game in the second-half and we spurned them. No matter how much possession you have, and we had plenty, if you can’t finish you are going to find it a wee bit more difficult. I know they had a player sent-off, but they defender stoutly.’

Amazingly, according to the stats from the official site, the possession was 50/50.

O’Neill added: ‘I’ve seen it back briefly and I’ve definitely seen referees give them. I thought initially Thomas was certainly held and pulled down. I think there was contact to begin with, but he seemed to let go as a moment which may give the referee breathing space. It happened, it was a goal and we can’t do anything about it. To equalise so early in the second-half, I thought that would be the platform for us to go on and win the game. We were in the ascendancy and had attack after attack, but the winner would not come. We had a few moments after the equaliser. I thought Olof Mellberg’s header looked very, very close to being over the line as well and Ashley Young had the header. I thought the goal was going to come, but it didn’t.’

‘If you’d said to me before Easter we’d collect four points, I probably would have taken that. But having won so well at Blackburn, a victory today might have moved us into the top ten. That was the disappointment – not converting the chances into goals.’

Villa are now 14th with 39 points leaving us 8 points clear of 18th placed Sheffield United (31 points if you aren’t any good at maths).