Big characters backed to arrest Aston Villa slide
Goal hero Ross Barkley is confident the big characters in Villa’s dressing room will help pull them out of their current slide.
Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Crystal Palace extended Villa’s winless run to six matches in all competitions and the midfielder, who earned his team a point with his second goal of the season, admitted to frustration at the result.
But he promised players are sticking together and is confident their form will soon turn.
He said: “There’s frustrations in the dressing room. Of course we want to be winning the game after the difficult spell we’ve been through but there’s plenty of big characters in the changing room.
“We all want to win. It just didn’t go our way. It’s disappointing. We came back from conceding and tried to build up from that with the momentum and try to kill the game but it just didn’t go our way.
“But we’re sticking together and the manager’s pushing us as hard as ever to keep raising our levels. Maybe this is just a little dip and maybe this is what we need to kick on. Hopefully we get that win next time and then we’ll kick on again.”
Villa twice came from behind to claim a point against Palace, who took the lead through Ismaila Sarr’s fourth-minute strike.
Youri Tielemans then had a penalty saved after Ollie Watkins had levelled the scores, with Palace reclaiming their advantage just moments later when Justin Devenny netted following a rapid counter attack from a Villa corner.
Barkley ensured Emery’s men would take a share of the spoils when he glanced home a Tielemans corner 13 minutes from time.
He said: “I speak to the majority of the squad. We’re all close. I’m not the most vocal but nowadays the players are all really close.
“It’s changed a bit from back when I started at Everton. It was a lot more vocal back in the day.
“The manager’s the main figure - he ticks every box, speaks to all the players, motivates us and we all know what we need to do.
“There’s voices from the players at half-time if we’re annoyed or frustrated or whatever. Ezri (Konsa) speaks, Diego (Carlos) speaks, Emi Martinez and (John) McGinn are vocal, Leon Bailey too believe it or not because you don’t really get wingers that are vocal.
“We’ve got voices in there that are frustrated. The manager just said keep calm, we’ll analyse it and go again.”