Dean Smith has praised his goalkeeper – and offered an interesting take on Joel Veltman’s marking job against Jack Grealish. The Aston Villa manager said Emiliano Martinez produced a “one-man show” as the Seagulls were held to a 0-0 draw.
Dean Smith said: “It wasn’t even bang average. I’ve not seen these players make as many unforced errors as we did today. Thankfully our goalkeeper was on form and kept another clean sheet to make it 12 this season. He has made three top-drawer saves that I can remember. There were a couple that were straight at him, down his throat. Emi is a fantastic goalkeeper. He will be the first to admit, out of the 12 clean sheets, he has been protected really well. Today we didn’t because we kept giving Brighton the ball back. They produced efforts on our goal and he was called into action too much. It was a one-man show at times such was the sloppiness of our play. Credit to Brighton as well. They are a good, progressive team well coached by Graham and they gave us problems all night. We had a week training rather than a midweek game and I thought we would come out of the traps raring to go – and we didn’t.”
Smith said Albion sacrificed Veltman in a move to keep Grealish quiet. That rather overlooked the fact Veltman forced two of those saves from Martinez, produced the best cross of the night and joined in with attacking play.
Dean Smith said: “They sacrificed a man and tried to take Jack out of the game with a man-to-man performance from Veltman. But we have just got to be better and not make as many unforced errors.”
