Sunday 23 March 2014 20:13, UK
Goalscorer Peter Crouch felt Stoke City were "deserved winners" after recovering from 1-0 down to beat Aston Villa 4-1.
Meanwhile, Villa boss Paul Lambert was disappointed his "second best" side lost their lead, and would not make excuses for them. Villa lost Karim El Ahmadi and Andreas Weimann to injury within a minute of each other in the first half, but Lambert said on Sky Sports 1: "We were definitely second best. That wasn't good enough. "We got off to a really good start, within five minutes things were looking okay - we lost a couple of lads to injury, Andy and Karim - but (beside that) we were still second best. "We had a really good start and got a really good goal, but the goals we lost were really, really poor. "We take nothing away from Stoke, they deserved to win the game. "(The injuries) do disrupt you a little bit but I'm not going to use that as an excuse." Next up for Villa is a trip to Manchester United next weekend and Lambert is confident his side can put in a good display following last week's 1-0 victory over league leaders Chelsea. He added: "We'll be really up for it. Like the Chelsea game, no one expects us to get anything. "It's a great game to play. As a footballer you want to play these sort of games and it's up to us to try to get something from them."
