Dean Smith met the media on Friday morning ahead of this weekend’s Premier League game against Southampton.
The Aston Villa Head Coach discussed team selection, opponents Southampton, squad morale and bouncing back from a first league defeat of the season last time out.
Here’s what he had to say…
On team selection…
The idea of the game is making sure players are all pushing for a place in the team. We’ve started the season really well and had a 40-minute blip against Leeds last Friday.
I’m sure the players who haven’t been in the starting line-up will smell a little bit of blood and want to get into that starting line-up.
Everyone who was fit for Leeds is fit for Sunday.
On Southampton…
They were good against Everton last week and had a really good comeback against Chelsea the week before as well.
They’ve been a team that you can look at since Project Restart that have been really strong, solid and reliable.
They’ve got goals in the team with Danny Ings and Che Adams. They’ve got a really good systematic approach that works for them. We’ll have to be at our best.
On squad morale…
They were disappointed obviously [after Leeds]. We’d spoken in the days before about how we didn’t want to turn it into a game that favoured Leeds – end-to-end.
They’re renowned for their intensity and their fitness levels and as soon as they scored that first goal, we got drawn into the trap of going toe-to-toe with them.
There was no getting high and no getting low. We haven’t been too high after the four straight wins at the start of the season and we won’t get too low over a poor 40 minutes.
On bouncing back…
I’ve got a good idea of how these players will react because I’ve been with them for a long time now. I know their character.
They were disappointed that we went away from our game plan against Leeds. It’s just about getting back on the pitch and performing.
I’m sure our players would have liked a game a lot sooner to put it right, but we’ve managed to have eight days to rectify mistakes and work on a tactical plan for Southampton.
