Aston Villa captain Tyrone Mings has called on his team-mates to have some ‘personal pride’ as they look to end a four game losing streak. Villa travel to the King Power Stadium on Saturday to take on Leicester City with a top-10 finish still possible, despite sitting in 15th place with seven games left. Steven Gerrard’s side are only four points behind Brighton and Hove Albion and have played two games less.
Tyrone Mings said: “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. We want to be better in both boxes. Both attacking-wise and defending, we have to be more ruthless and more clinical. 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. As defenders, we need to keep the ball out of our net way more than we have been doing.”
Three points on Saturday will see Villa climb to 12th if results go their way. In a season which started off looking like the team would be entrenched in a relegation battle, it’s a relief for those at Villa Park that their Premier League status is safe for another year. But not content with that, Mings wants to break into the top-10 as that will be a sign of ‘progress’ from last season’s 11th-placed finish.
Tyrone Mings said: “There has to be a personal pride, especially for the players who were here last season when we finished 11th. We want to finish higher than that, and any steps towards improvement up the table aren’t to be sniffed at. If we finish above that this season, that represents progress again.”
