Pundit issues ‘massive’ Aston Villa player claim as Steven Gerrard ‘sat in the house’ fuming
The Aston Villa players must share the blame for the club’s poor start to the season.
That’s according to former Hibernian striker Tam McManus, speaking exclusively to Football Insider about Villa’s squad.
On Monday (24 October), Aston Villa announced the appointment of Unai Emery.
He replaces Steven Gerrard, who was sacked following last week’s 3-0 loss to Fulham (20 October).
Villa bounced back with a 4-0 win over Brentford on Sunday (23 October).
McManus insists there is work to do for Emery as the playing squad is not performing anywhere near as well as it should be.
“It’s difficult to tell, when you look at the Brentford result you might think the manager was the problem,” McManus told Football Insider‘s Ben Wild.
“But Gerrard is probably sat in the house thinking, ‘where was that when I was the manager?’. We haven’t seen that kind of performance from Aston Villa all season.
“Sometimes that can happen when a manager has got sacked, the players feel free and then go and put in a performance.
“It’s a wonderful result for them and the shackles are off. They played without fear, the pressure was off. They are underachieving massively.
“They have a real quality squad of players, they should be in a relegation battle. The players have to take some of the blame for that as well by the way.
“We saw how good they were against Brentford so where was that under Gerrard? There is work for the new boss to do.”
Aston Villa are next in action against Newcastle United on Saturday (29 October).
Emery will not be in the dugout due to issues with his work permit.
In other news, Agbonlahor has issued a ‘£100m’ Aston Villa transfer claim as new Unai Emery details emerge.