Steven Gerrard blames Aston Villa ‘naivety’ on Crystal Palace draw

Aston Villa manager Steven Gerrard has blamed the naivety of some in his side for not getting the three points against Crystal Palace on Sunday afternoon.

After going 1-0 up with 20 minutes to go, Villa looked to be on their way to a victory in their penultimate home game but the failure to deal with a Palace corner just 10 minutes later led to the contest finishing all square.

On the performance as a whole, the manager believes his men didn’t really put a foot wrong until a moment of naivety which led to the equaliser.

“I don’t think there was much wrong with it (the performance) in all honesty,” Gerrard said.

“I thought it was a really close game.

“I thought Patrick’s team caused us some issues in the first-half, we had to tweak one or two things at half-time but going over the chances in the game - I felt like we created enough to win the game and score more than one goal.

“I think on another day if we were more ruthless and more clinical, we’d be sitting here talking about three points rather than one.

“Really naive in terms of the goal we’ve conceded but our overall performance I don’t think there was too much wrong with it.”

“They’ve got dangerous players, they’re a good team and we haven’t conceded one set-play well enough on a second phase and unfortuantely that has cost us two points,” he added.

“I thought we were naive to give the foul away in the first place because were 1-0 up at home, we’re still creating chances in and around that to go and tke the game away from Crystal Palace so we were extremely naive to concede in the way we did.

“Outside of that, I thought we did enough to just edge the game but I expected a close game because of where we’re sitting in the table and I think that’s what everyone seen.”

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