By Richard Wakefield
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The solitary point against Wolves on Saturday night was a wake up call for Villa and newly appointed manager Steve Bruce as Villa climbed out of the Championship relegation zone. With no wins in ten matches, Aston Villa may start to be looking over their shoulder a lot more than they expected.
Steve Bruce hopes to stop the rot as Villa travel down south to Reading where the hosts are unbeaten at the Madejski Stadium all season. With an extra day of training with the squad, Steve Bruce may have clearer picture of who will be donning the claret and blue strip on Tuesday night in an attempt to derail Jaap Stam’s men.
Here’s three ways of making sure it happens…
1. Royal Complacency
Has the shine of playing Aston Villa worn off already? With Reading sitting just one point behind the play-off spots, Villa go in to this match as the underdog.
A big worry for Villa going in to this season was many teams using their matches against Villa as having a cup final type atmosphere. However with Reading flying high and Villa continuing to sink, the Royals may become a little complacent during the match.
It has become all the more obvious that there is a serious fitness and/or mentality problem when it comes to Villa’s second half performances. This was backed up by Brentford’s Scott Hogan’s interview last week, where he mentioned how even the opposition are beginning to capitalise on the weakness of Villa’s players during the latter stages of the game.
With weakened body language and worries of making any mistakes rushing through their minds, it’s easy to see why Villa have conceded so many goals late on. Although, all footballers at this level have to face the same issues.
The Villa players along with Steve Bruce need to have a long talk about how they can use this negative stigma to their advantage. Catching Reading off guard and not crumbling towards the end of the match and becoming re-energised instead, could throw off the game plan Jaap Stam has planned.
UTV
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Sensible, but we’ve been here before. We need to buy players who are up for it from day one, or why buy them