Ezri Konsa admitted Aston Villa “weren’t good enough” as they fell 2-0 to Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux on Saturday evening.
A lacklustre first half saw the Villans trail 1-0 at the break and, despite a response in the second period, Matheus Cunha’s stoppage-time strike sealed the points for the hosts.
Konsa gave no excuses for the performance and result, having played in the Champions League three days ago, and felt Villa didn’t do enough to take a result.
“We just weren’t good enough today, simple as that,” he said.
“Second half, I thought we performed much better, put a lot a pressure on, but it just wasn’t enough. I don’t feel like we troubled the back four or the goalkeeper enough.
“We can make excuses about being fatigued or not, but we want to play Champions League football, so we have to be prepared for that.
“We have to be able to recover well and go again on a weekend. That’s not an excuse, we have just got to do better.
“We have to go back now and work on it. We have to improve, and we have to do it now.”
Having fallen behind to Jean-Ricner Bellegarde’s strike just 12 minutes in, Konsa bemoaned Villa’s lack of defensive discipline early in games, particularly away from home.
The England defender insists improvements must be made if they are to achieve what they aim to this season.
He added: “We lost every battle in that first half. First balls, second balls. They scored a goal early on.
“This season, playing away from home, we’ve conceded in the first 10/15 minutes quite a lot.
“We’re conceding [nearly] every game, we haven’t kept as many clean sheets as we would’ve liked.
“Me being in the backline, it’s something that I have to go back and look on, and change it.
“It’s something we need to work on as a team, and we have to improve on it now.”
