Steven Gerrard praised Aston Villa’s second-half display and the character to fight from two goals down and salvage a 2-2 draw against Manchester United.
Villa trailed at half-time courtesy of Bruno Fernandes’ early long-range strike and, despite an improved display after the interval, fell 2-0 down when the Portuguese bagged his second of the evening.
But Jacob Ramsey’s 77th-minute strike handed the Villans hope before new signing Philippe Coutinho sent Villa Park wild with a quickfire leveller on his debut.
Villa head coach Gerrard felt his side were a different prospect after the break and hailed the courage shown to secure a point.
“I think it was a game of two halves as far as we’re concerned,” he told VillaTV.
“I thought we were second best first half, certainly for the first 25 minutes.
“We didn’t start on the front foot, we weren’t aggressive, we were passive and we certainly deserved to concede a goal on the back of that.
“So that was really disappointing. We improved slightly from going a goal down.
“But at half-time we’re 1-0 down and I didn’t like what I was seeing in the first half. So we had to get into the players, we had to be honest with one or two and I expected and demanded a reaction and we got it.
“I thought we were excellent second half for the majority of it.
“We conceded and we were a little bit hard done by, I thought it was a little bit against the run of play because we improved.
“And at 2-0 down I needed the players to show amazing character, amazing courage; we did and we finished ever so strong.
“If we would have got the second-half performance over 90 minutes I believe we would have won the game.”
You can watch Steven’s full interview below…
