Steven Gerrard takes no credit for holding Manchester City to their lowest xG total of the season

Aston Villa manager Steven Gerrard says he takes no credit for his side holding Manchester City to their lowest xG (expected goals) tally of the season in the 2-1 defeat at Villa Park.

The claret & blue limited the champions to a 0.9 xG score - the only side to hold Pep Guardiola’s men to a value under 1 this year.

They also became only the second side in 93 Premier League games to be able to achieve that statistic.

And whilst it matters little in the grand scheme of things as Gerrard’s team walked away empty handed - what it does show is the scouser has implemented his blueprint onto the lads in such a short period of time and they have responded incredibly well to his methods.

The difference in this Villa team to the one that took the field against Southampton on November 5 is night and day. There appears to be a genuine belief that they can beat anyone once again.

However, whilst the former Liverpool captain is getting a lot of the plaudits and rightly so - he believes he deserves no credit and put all the praise on the players.

“I think the players deserve the credit if that’s one positive that you’re going to give the team,” Gerrard said.

“I think the players deserve the credit, certainly not me.

“I don’t really look into that, at the end of the day Pep took three points away, that’s the main stat.

“I focus on the performance which was positive, of course it was and I thought for the talent that we were up against we did defend our goal extremely well, bar two moments.

“So yeah, for me, we’ll take the positives from it and if that stat is true the players obviously deserve some credit for that because Man City are a top team and it doesn’t matter who they put out and who they have available they’ve always got world class players so credit to the boys for, in the main, beside the two goals, defending the goal really well.”

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