Villa shut outs a team effort for Brad

Goalkeeper Brad Friedel has insisted Villa's stunning sequence of clean sheets in the league is a team effort.

Saturday's stalemate at Tottenham made it four straight shut-outs for the claret and blues,in the Premier League and, going into tomorrow's showdown with Manchester United, they currently boast the best defensive record in the top flight, having conceded just 18 times in 24 matches.

Friedel and his back four, led by Richard Dunne, have been showered with praise for a watertight defence.

But the veteran American stopper reckons Villa's frontmen deserve just as much credit.

He said: "Clean sheets are collective, it's not down to goalkeepers. It is collective defending. The amount of times in the first half that we stopped service and stopped it at source, we've got people like John Carew, Emile Heskey and Gabby Agbonlahor helping to do that.

"It sometimes goes unnoticed at times during the game. But myself and the back four, we definitely take notice because it's one less time you have to deal with 6ft 7ins Peter Crouch and one less time you have Jermain Defoe getting the second ball off him.

"We appreciate it when strikers and midfielders stop it at the source, we have something instilled in our team where everybody is willing to do that."

But, as positive as the statistics might be, Friedel insists Villa's players are only interested in results.

He said: "The real sense of pride is winning football matches. The stats don't come into play so much for us. We want to win football matches. When you can't win a football match then you don't want to lose it.

"You have to take the next best thing and at Tottenham we got the next best thing."

The weekend draw left Villa seventh just three points adrift of fourth-placed Liverpool, raising the stakes for the visit of Sir Alex Ferguson's men as the race for a Champions League place intensifies.

Friedel concedes Villa will be going all out to do the double over the champions, whom they defeated 1-0 at Old Trafford in December, for what is a dress rehearsal of this month's Carling Cup final.

He said: "I think any game in the Premier League is what you would call a must win game in a sense. It doesn't matter where you are in the league, if you're going for the top spot, Champions League spot, Europa League spot or fighting off relegation.

"That's what makes the league so exciting. We go into every single game one at a time trying to build ourselves up that it is a must win game.

"We have to do that because if you don't for the Premier League games then you will come short, in that it's a physically demanding league."