O’Leary ‘Villa Back To Our Worst’

David O’Leary has admitted that the second half display was Villa at their worst.

An average first half that saw Villa take the lead was followed by a capitulation in the second half as West Ham bullied us and dominated the game. With players out of position and set pieces a joke, you can but wonder what the manager is doing for his million pound contract. And when you look at what we have available on the bench, you have to ask WHY is Ellis still in charge and WHY isn’t the man ashamed of the way he is holding back the club?

Anyway (!).

O’Leary told the official site: ‘That was back to us at our worst in the second-half and I’m not going to offer any excuses. West Ham were hungrier than us and they out-muscled us in the end. I was reasonably happy with the first-half. We played well enough and we were a goal up. It was going well. But we suddenly forgot everything we’ve been doing so well recently and West Ham took advantage of that.’

Adding ‘The second-half was the sort of performance we saw all too often in the first half of the season. We’ve probably seen about ten performances like that this season and it’s not good enough.’ Only 10 David? You sure?

He continued: ‘We know that to win games and do well, we have to win our battles all over the pitch. We have to work hard and play well as a unit. We’ve done that very well in the recent run, but we didn’t get the basics right in the second-half today and we were punished for it. Now we go into a very tricky away game at Spurs and we know we can’t afford to perform like that down at White Hart Lane.’

Not only Spurs, but a battling cup game v Port Vale the week after, then the easy task of taking on the Chelsea millionaires. And all that with no money to freshen up the troops. Happy days.