Tyrone Mings sets out ‘ruthless’ Villa objective; severe warning over ‘poor’ performances

Tyrone Mings has sent out a warning to his Aston Villa teammates regarding ‘poor’ performances in a bid to finish the season in a strong manner.

Villa’s form has been up and down for much of this season. Dean Smith was sacked after a poor run, losing five games on the spin between October and November. Steven Gerrard took over, and inspired Villa to some good results. Of his first four games in charge, Villa won three, only losing to Manchester City.

The Villans’ best run this season was three wins on the bounce, against Brighton, Southampton and Leeds United. However, their form has slipped once again, and they have lost each of the four games since then.

During that run of four successive defeats, Villa have conceded nine goals. Skipper Mings wants his team to put an end to these bad defensive performances.

“As a defence, we have to look at not conceding such poor goals. The league is hard enough and unforgiving enough without us giving the opposition a leg up or a goal advantage,” he told Aston Villa’s website.

“As defenders, we need to keep the ball out of our net way more than we have been doing.”

Mings also wants to see improvement at the opposite end of the pitch.

“We want to be better in both boxes. Both attacking-wise and defending, we have to be more ruthless and more clinical,” he added.

“I don’t say that to single out the attackers, I say that as a team we need to serve the attackers better and get them some good goalscoring opportunities.”

Villa are currently 15th, and better effort on both ends of the pitch should help them to get out of the tough spot they find themselves in.

The Villa skipper is clear on his intentions, to help the side to as good a league finish as is possible.

“There has to be a