Petrov: Don’t blame MacDonald for Villa defeat
Monday 23rd August 2010, 11:30AM BST.
Skipper Stiliyan Petrov today admitted Villa’s Newcastle nightmare has damaged Kevin MacDonald’s job prospects – but insisted the players, not their caretaker boss, are to blame.
The claret and blues slumped to a catastrophic 6-0 thrashing on Tyneside yesterday as the newly-promoted Magpies ran riot at St James’ Park.
A mauling of such magnitude blew away virtually all of the early-season optimism around Villa Park as MacDonald, who has been at the helm for a fortnight since Martin O’Neill quit, suffered the first defeat of his temporary reign.
MacDonald conceded afterwards he had been “naive”, but, in a brutally frank account of Villa’s display, Petrov has defended the Scot and claimed it is the players who are accountable.
“It’s really sad when you see the caretaker manager trying to get the job and we didn’t help him,” said Petrov. “Are we feeling guilty? Yes. Like everyone has been saying, we would love Kev to get the job.
“He’s been great to us, even after the game he was really calm and just made the points about what we did wrong.
“We’re the ones who play, so it’s our responsibility. He tells us what we need to do and if we don’t do it it’s our own fault. We take all the responsibility because we weren’t performing well enough to win.”
The Bulgaria international refused to use John Carew’s penalty miss when the scores were still level as an excuse for the mauling and insisted not one of the team was free from blame.
He said: “Could it have been different if John had scored? It could have been but we can’t just blame that — we conceded six goals.
“It’s up to us now to change all this. We know what we did wrong. We know from the first man to the last man we were really poor.”
And he even accused the players of treating their opponents too lightly. He added: “We were probably a little bit naive. We thought we were going to get an easy game after our performance last week. But last week was last week. You need to be prepared for every game.”
UK Sport
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What happened at Newcastle??? Could understand that result against Chelski or one of the usual Top 4 teams but Newcastle???
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I am still a Villa supporter, despite having moved to West Yorkshire in 1978, but after yesterdays performance I am at a loss!!
Don’t get me wrong, I rate Newcastle as a team and am pleased to see them back in the Premiership
But come on Villa, you seem to have fallen apart in their first game without James Milner!!
Get yourselves together boys, Steve Ireland will do the same job and maybe a bit more!!
I would like to see MacDonald as Manager, maybe the boys don’t? In a perfect world I would like Martin back!!
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Who remembers our record in the last 15 years at Newcastle.We have lost more there than we have won!
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