Gregory : You ain't seen nothing yet (16 Feb)

JOHN GREGORY has insisted that his side can, and will, return to winning ways on Wednesday against Leeds United after a recent bad run of results.

Villa have, for the first time this season, dropped out of the top three following two successive Premiership defeats at the hands of Newcastle and Blackburn. Gregory insists that the results were simply a "blip" in Villa's season and has told his players to go out and win the next three games to put themselves back into the top three.

Three points on Wednesday followed by wins over Wimbledon and Coventry will give us nine points and things could look very different," Gregory said "We will have one or two missing, but otherwise we will have a strong squad."

Villa will have skipper Gareth Southgate, Dion Dublin, Paul Merson and Alan Thompson all fully fit, and Lee Hendrie back after a one-match ban, for the visit of David O'Leary's talented young side, thus ending Gregory's recent selection problems because of injuries and suspension.

Gregory though has admitted that his shortage of numbers over the past few weeks could have been avoided: "I suppose I have to take some of the blame, when players were out with injuries and suspension, that I hadn't added two or three more bodies to our squad. "But I feel what we had to endure those couple of weeks was exceptional, it was a freak situation to lose so many players at once. Perhaps if we had two or three more players in the squad we would have been able to cope."



Martin Sivorn © 1999.E-Mail Me