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Skipper Martin Laursen admits he is worried by Villa’s current defensive deficiencies – but insists they will get to the bottom of them.

Villa’s new-look back five have conceded five times in their first two Premier League games of the new campaign, twice against Manchester City last week and three times at Stoke on Saturday.

They managed to outscore City 4-2 but after twice pegging back the Potters an injury-time header from Mamady Sidibe condemned them to a 3-2 defeat.

And the ex-AC Milan defender conceded discussions are needed to get to the root of the problem.

He said: “We knew it was going to be a battle, it wasn’t a surprise but I thought we could have done better.

“But again we conceded three goals – and that was the most disappointing thing.

“We need to face the fact that we conceded too many goals last season and have now conceded five goals in two games at the start of this season.

“We need to think about that and worry a bit about that because it is not like we didn’t concede goals last season– we conceded a lot of goals.

“And we are still conceding goals. We need to talk about it.”

The Denmark international had a mixed afternoon, giving away what looked a harsh penalty before scoring what had looked like an equaliser until Sidibe struck at the death.

However, he remains optimistic for the campaign and intends to right Saturday’s wrongs in their two crunch games this week against FH Hafnarfjordur and Liverpool.

“We always bounced back last season and we will try and do that again,” he said.

“I can’t promise that but our confidence is fine. It is not low, we are just sad not to have got a least a point from the weekend.

“Confidence is still okay. We played a very good game against Manchester City at home.

“We hope to win again on Thursday, we are just disappointed that we came back twice against Stoke but lost the game.

“We are looking forward to this week coming up, but we can’t be happy.

“We are sad right now because we lost at Stoke.

“However when the dust settles we are facing a big week.”