Tim Sherwood has spoken in the aftermath of Aston Villa's loss to Manchester United, explaining that he was impressed by the work-rate of his players, and that he's confident his team will improve in the coming weeks.

The Villans fell to a 1-0 defeat against Louis Van Gaal's United side on Friday, with Adnan Januzaj's first half strike proving to be the only chance taken, in a game with few opportunities for either team to score.

Coming as something of a disappointment after their opening day win over Bournemouth, Villa struggled to get going in the final third. They battled resiliently to keep United out, but seemed out of energy when going forward, which contributed to their downfall eventually.

A close game 

Sherwood explained how he "didn't think there was much in the game" and that "the boys gave everything for the cause", in terms of trying to get something from the game.

Juan Mata's guided pass set up Januzaj for the goal, which Sherwood described as "flukey", in reference to the shot deflecting off Ciaran Clark's foot. However, he did concede that his men "gave Mata too much room" to execute the pass.

Lack of attacking potency costs Villans

The aforementioned Villa attack failed to produce many chances in the whole 90 minutes, but there was a controversial decision when no penalty was awarded to Micah Richards, despite the centre-back being hauled down by Matteo Darmian from a corner kick.

The Villa manager told of how he thougt they "had a shout" for the penalty, but felt that it was one of those where "sometimes you do, sometimes you don't" - in terms of getting the decision.

Despite the penalty appeal, he wasn't pleased with his attacking unit as a whole, lamenting them for not carrying "enough attacking threat", which he suggested was down to missing some "flair players such as [Carles] Gil and [Jack] Grealish", aswell as Adama Traore, who completed his move to the club on Friday morning.

VAVEL Logo
About the author