Deja vu for Steven Gerrard as he reflects on Aston Villa’s ‘45 minute’ performances ahead of Leicester City

Four months ago in Steven Gerrard’s fourth game in charge of Aston Villa, they came back from a goal down to win 2-1 at home to Leicester City.

The victory made it three wins in four for Gerrard who had made an extremely impressive start to his tenure in the west midlands.

Whilst that kind of form seems a lifetime ago off the back of four successive defeats - reflecting on the team itself and the performances that they are putting in - not much has changed.

Following that win, the manager delivered some telling post match comments for the first time. He claimed that he had to have stern words with his players at half-time during that game, delivering a few ‘home truths’ to them as a group.

Despite going into the break tied at one a piece, the former Liverpool captain wasn’t impressed with what he had seen.

“There’s loads of work still to do,” he said.

“It took a few home truths at half-time to sort our issues out, to rejig our shape and a few other things.

“All you can ask of your players is to perform, we did that. I thought we were outstanding in the second half.

“But can we do it for a full 90 minutes without me having to get on the players’ back at half-time?”

If you didn’t know what game those comments were from, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were from one of the last four. It’s a classic case of deja vu.

Performing for 45 minutes has been a huge gripe of Gerrard’s since his arrival. It’s something he picked up on during that game versus the Foxes four months ago and it’s something, as we head into the reverse fixture this weekend, he is still very much trying to drill into his players.

Supporters struggle to understand how the team can look like world beaters in one half and relegation fodder the next and whilst it must be becoming extremely tiresome for the manager to keep repeating, he claimed that he isn’t frustrated by it.

In fact, he simply let it be known that it’s the level that the current group find themselves at.

“It’s not frustrating, it’s where we are,” explained Gerrard.

“It’s not commitment, it’s not effort, it’s not application, it’s more just, can we find that consistency over the main part of the game.

“When we have done that, we’ve picked up some real strong results. The likes of Everton away, Brighton away, a lot of games away so I’m hoping for that 90 minute performance against Leicester.

“It’s been frustrating the last couple of weeks because we’ve fallen down the table.

“Results last weekend didn’t go for us at all. The ones midweek have been slightly kinder but we’re in this position, we’re well aware of where we are and the current form we’re in and tomorrow’s another opportunity for us to move back up the table and move closer to where we want to be come the end of the season. That’s been the focus for the last couple of weeks.

“But when you can’t play to put your form right and when the table is changing, it can be quite a frustrating time and that’s what we’ve had to live with in the last couple of weeks.”

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