Express & Star

Dejected Martin O’Neill admitted Villa didn’t perform and sympathised with the fans after another poor result and performance.

Villa have now taken two points from 12 and one from six at home after losing to Sunderland.

“It was a poor day,” said the Villa boss. “It was particularly disappointing because it was the opportunity for us to get back on track, to force the pace and force a win.

“We went out knowing one of our main rivals Portsmouth had already lost and we failed to take advantage.

“We didn’t necessarily have to play wonderfully well – it was just about winning. But not only did we fail to win, we lost.

“I understand the frustrations of the fans. This is something we have to put right.

“This was a home game. It’s our responsibility to attack and make it as entertaining as possible.

“I accept towards the end of the season perhaps you might get a nervous performance and we looked nervous, but if you get a nervous performance, make sure you win. We didn’t.

“We had to get that breakthrough and it didn’t happen for us. We didn’t do well enough for long enough again.

“Then as we were thinking there was still a chance to force a winning goal, we conceded a really lousy goal.

“It was a very poor goal from our viewpoint. Had we had scored first, we’d have won because one goal was (always) going to win it.

“I couldn’t see Sunderland ekeing out a chance for themselves and I didn’t envisage losing, but we lost in disappointing fashion.”

O’Neill admitted he was baffled by Villa’s sudden dip after going within five seconds of beating Arsenal away two weeks before.

“We came back from the Emirates Stadium in an absolutely buoyant mood and you’d have expected these matches to have yielded more than one point because of the confidence exuding from us,” he said.

“We did so well at Arsenal when we came within a few seconds of winning but since then we’ve been disappointing.

“You wouldn’t have expected us to collect only one point from our last two home games. I have to rectify it.

“We were looking forward to the rest of the season, thinking we could eke out results, as we have done.

“But it’s just failed to materialise and, since the draw at Arsenal, we haven’t done ourselves justice.

“That’s three games now where we’ve not done enough to win.

“It was a big game for both clubs and we were very disappointed to lose. We set out boldly enough, but lost our way.” O’Neill accepts full responsbility for the slump and insisted Villa have to drag themselves out of their current dip.

“I’m the one who has to rectify this,” he said. “We’ve got ourselves into this predicament and we have to get ourselves out of it.

“We failed to take any chances that came our way but you can’t just point the finger at that. Our overall play was disappointing and it’s my responsibility.

“If you have nervous performances, you have to make sure at least you win. We haven’t been doing this. If we don’t make Europe, we won’t have deserved to over the course of the campaign.

“We failed to take our chances but it was more than that. In our play we weren’t good enough.”