Villa star: Pressure growing

Villa defender Martin Laursen has challenged his team-mates to deal with the growing expectations around the club.

Martin O’Neill’s side enter the home straight knowing they could qualify for the UEFA Cup for the first time by league position for 10 years.

Growing expectations have seen average crowds top 40,000 – the club’s highest since 1949-50.

And Danish international Laursen insists the players have to cope with the increased burden if they are to succeed in their goal.

“We have to deal with that (the pressure) if we want to be a big team and go for European places,” said Laursen.

“It’s a positive problem. We’ve done well and there are high expectations from the fans, but we have those expectations as well because we want to do well.

“We have a good team that can perform well, and that’s why we’re unhappy with those results in the last two games.”

Starting with today’s clash against Sunderland, Villa finish their home programme with four games against struggling sides, with Bolton, Birmingham and Wigan to follow. And Laursen doesn’t want to see a repeat of the woeful performance against Middlesbrough in the last home game.

“We got a draw against Middlesbrough, but in the dressing room, it felt like a heavy defeat because we were thinking about six points from two games.

“I wasn’t happy about the Boro game,” he said.

“The fans booed because Boro were the best team in the first half. They fought and worked harder, they won the ball and we were always on the back foot.”

And he insists Villa must seize the initiative, adding: “We can’t just play as the underdogs all the time and play on the counter-attack.

“We need to control games and go into a home match against a team not as good as us and win.

“If we can’t do that, we’re not a big team and we can’t go for anything.

“There are expectations, but that’s normal. If you want to be a big team you have to win games against perhaps the smaller teams.

“We’ve proved we can get points from the bigger teams and you’ll get games at home where you don’t get all three points.”