Premier League: Aston Villa boss Paul Lambert rues missed chances as goal drought goes on

Aston Villa manager Paul Lambert believes his side had the chances before the game went away from them against Arsenal.

The Gunners eventually ran out 5-0 winners as the visitors drew a blank for the sixth consecutive Premier League game - setting an unwanted club record.

Andreas Weimann and Christian Benteke both missed good chances, while Ashley Westwood was denied late on by David Ospina as Villa registered just two shots on target. Afterwards, Lambert remained positive and was happy with his side’s display for the first hour of the match.

“For about 60, 65 minutes or so we were well in the game,” he said. “We had a great chance towards the end of the first half when the goalkeeper’s made a good save, and I thought Christian should have scored just after half time.

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“You’ve got to score when you get these moments, especially when you come to places like this, but the goals after that were really poor from our point of view.

“I think, the way Arsenal have been playing, if we sat back and sat back they would have come and got us anyway. So I thought ‘let’s go and give a good game of it’ and, as I say, for a good 60 minutes or so we were well in the game.

“But the goals we lost after that, that’s the disappointing thing. And the reaction after the goals was poor.”

Over 10 hours of Premier League football have passed since Benteke scored in Villa’s 1-1 draw against Manchester United before Christmas, and the Midlands club’s record of 11 goals in 23 matches is the worst out of all 92 Football League clubs in the country.

Confidence

Villa sit just three points off the relegation zone in 16th place, and Lambert knows how important it is for them to start finding the net.

“It’s everything. When you don’t score you don’t win games,” he said.

“We’ve just got to keep going hard in training and hopefully it turns around. We had chances to score, but coming here you’ve got to take them.

“We’ve just got to keep our confidence up, that’s the thing. We came into this game full of confidence from last week. It wasn’t as if we never created any chances – for the second goal we actually had the ball near the Arsenal penalty area.”