Ashley Young: Point is not enough for Villa

Jan 28 2008 By Bill Howell, Birmingham Mail

ASHLEY Young said it was a case of "practice makes perfect" as he curled home another set-piece cracker against Blackburn.

But the winger was left to rue a case of what might have been after Villa failed to nail fourth place in the table.

"I always practice free-kicks in training - when I get the time - and when they go in, all that work pays off and you can only be happy," he said.

Young says Villa were far from happy with the point, despite it taking them one place higher in the table.

"It is nice to be fifth in the table but we could have been fourth, so we are disappointed.

"We are still up there, and if we can say at the end of the season that we finished fourth - then we had a really good season.

"We are serious about finishing as high as possible. We started the season wanting to finish in the European positions, now we want to finish as high as we can.

"There are a lot of teams around us in the table, it is not just a case of concentrating on Liverpool. We have to concentrate on ourselves and take each game as it comes. The boys are already looking forward to Fulham and I believe they will get three points."

Young loses his ever-present league record on Sunday due to suspension and says the enforced break is not ideal.

"I want to play every game. Ask any player who is playing well, they want to play and do well. I want to carry on but unfortunately it is one of those things.

"If the manager gives me a few days off that would be nice, but I want to be in and around the training ground keeping things ticking over."

Young says Villa could easily have stolen an unlikely win by the end of the 90 minutes, despite their lacklustre display.

"We are disappointed with how the first half went.

"By the end of the game we could have nicked all three points, but having gone a goal down and with them having missed a penalty we have to be pleased.

"We have to take the positives out of the game."

READ BILL'S VILLA BLOG AT WWW.BIRMINGHAMMAIL.NET/BLOG