Steven Gerrard felt Aston Villa produced an “outstanding” second-half display in Sunday’s victory against Leicester City at Villa Park.
With the game finely poised at 1-1 after an end-to-end first 45 minutes, the home side took control of the contest when Ezri Konsa bagged his second of the game.
And with goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez only called into serious action once in the second half, the Villa head coach was left to revel in a big three points.
He said: “I’m really pleased. It was a game of two halves, similar to midweek, so we had to get into the players a bit at half-time and demand a bit more.
“I thought we were a little bit passive in the first half, we weren’t picking up enough second balls, we kept turning the ball over and on transition we had a few issues.
“We had to address a few situations, in terms of how we wanted it to look in the second half. The players came out and were absolutely outstanding. In the end, we deserved our win.”
He added: “The second-half performance was really close to being perfect. We could have run away with it. At 2-1, we’ve had three or four really good chances to score more.”
The win was particularly pleasing for Gerrard given his side’s response to going behind and the disappointment of Jacob Ramsey’s disallowed goal on the stroke of half-time.
A winning mentality is what the head coach demands from his Villa players, and he feels the team are developing that trait nicely as they climb the table after making it three wins in four games under his leadership.
“I don’t want us to be a team that looks back and feels sorry for ourselves,” he said.
“It’s important that we’re positive and move forward. This a huge win; it puts us into the top ten and now we really want to look forward.
“We’ve got Wolves and Brighton in our sights and we want to keep pushing forward.”
