Frustration and disappointment were written all over Tim Sherwood’s face but the last thing the Aston Villa manager needs at this stage of the season is for seeds of doubt to be replanted in the minds of his players. “Depression mode” was the expression Sherwood used to describe morale when he took over at Villa Park last month and he is determined to prevent any negativity from resurfacing no matter how hard this defeat was to stomach.
A late goal from Bafétimbi Gomis upset Villa’s revival under Sherwood, bringing an end to a run of three successive victories and providing a wake-up call to anyone who dared to think that the Midlands club were on the road to survival after that 4-0 victory at Sunderland the previous week. “No one is resting on their laurels,” Sherwood said. “Other people might think that we’re safe now, or we’re as good as after a result like last week, but it’s far from done.”
Not a man to hide his emotions, Sherwood looked more hurt than anyone after the final whistle here. With three wins and three defeats from his six games in charge, he has been cock-a-hoop or crestfallen so far. Middle ground is as hard to find as mid-table.
Sherwood will not, however, dwell on this latest setback and, with only eight games of the season remaining and just three points separating Villa from the relegation zone, the message the manager issued to his players is that they need to move on quickly as well.
“We can’t take this defeat too deeply because you can seep back into that depression mode which you don’t want,” Sherwood said. “It was very low when I arrived. They were on the floor. They hadn’t won a Premier League game [in 10 matches], I don’t expect them to be doing cartwheels around the training ground. It has picked up and it’s picked up with a few results and the belief that what we’re doing is the right way forward. Obviously this is a little blip. It’s just a bump in the road and we need to get over it and continue.”
That could be easier said then done. Three of Villa’s next four league fixtures see them travel to Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City. The home game amid that sequence is against fellow strugglers Queens Park Rangers and can be filed in the folder marked “must win”. “I think that was always going to be a big one,” Sherwood said.
With Tom Cleverley limping off with a groin injury in the first half here, Christian Benteke forced off with a troublesome hip problem in the second half - at one point during the game the Belgian came across to the touchline to take a painkiller - and an entire back four in the treatment room, the international break may not have come at a bad time for Villa.
The reverse was true of Gomis’s goal. There were only three minutes remaining when the Frenchman got ahead of Ciaran Clark to slot home a low cross that Jefferson Montero, the impressive Swansea substitute, beautifully delivered with the outside of his right boot. Gomis’s raucous celebration showed just how much it meant to a player who scored regularly for Lyon but is still trying to step out of Wilfried Bony’s shadow and adapt to the English game.
“We know what the headlines would have been if we didn’t win that game but Bafe deserved that,” said Garry Monk, the Swansea manager, alluding to the three chances that Gomis had missed. “His commitment and effort in recent weeks since Bony left has been top. He is getting good chances, he is very clever, he just needs to get that little bit sharper with it and I am sure it will come.”
Man of the match Federico Fernández (Swansea City)
