Ahead of Sunday’s Premier League game against Liverpool, Dean Smith spoke to the media at Bodymoor Heath.
The Head Coach discussed taking on the reigning champions, a positive transfer window so far and Aston Villa’s start to the season.
Here’s what he had to say…
On Liverpool…
Everybody is beatable on the day. We’ve just got beaten by a Championship team, so that proves everybody is beatable.
Their cumulative record over the past two seasons is incredible with the points tally that they’ve got. Them and Manchester City have been way out ahead of everybody over the last two years.
It will be a really tough game and they’ve had a good start to the season, but there’s no reason why we can’t feel that we’re more athletic and robust than the team that faced them last season.
On the transfer window…
It feels like a really good window. It’s a lot easier when you only have a handful of signings to do rather than the 13 we had to do last year.
I believe we’ve added quality to a more experienced team in the Premier League, having found it tough in the first season.
I said at the end of last season that I saw an improvement from the majority of our players and now we’ve added quality to that core of the team. Overall, I’m really pleased with where we’re at.
On Villa’s start to the season…
It’s certainly helped everybody to be excited for the season ahead. Winning your first two league games gives you a kickstart and we need to make sure we continue that.
It just shows that, defensively, we’ve continued what we did at the end of last season. We’ve only conceded two goals in our first five games.
Defensively, we’ve got a really sound structure at the moment.
On team news…
Kortney Hause came off last night and he’ll be assessed this morning.
Ross Barkley is in my thoughts. The reason he’s come in is to play games. He thought he might not get the game time he desired at Chelsea.
He wants to get the minutes in and he wants to play.
