Dean Smith ‘embarrassed’ by Aston Villa’s damaging loss at Southampton | Football

Dean Smith lambasted Aston Villa’s “embarrassing” performance and said there are “too many training-ground players” in his struggling squad after watching his side suffer a ninth Premier League defeat in 13 matches. Villa remain precariously positioned a point above the relegation zone after goals by Shane Long and Stuart Armstrong provided home comforts to hoist Southampton into mid-table and condemn a flaky Villa side to a deserved defeat.

As Smith acknowledged, if Villa turn in a similar display next Sunday in the Carabao Cup final against Manchester City at Wembley, an occasion to celebrate threatens to be a deeply chastening experience. Villa were outclassed from start to finish with Southampton eventually building on Long’s early strike in second-half stoppage time when Armstrong swept the ball into an empty net while Pepe Reina made the pilgrimage back to his goal after going up for a late corner in vain.

For Villa this was a damaging defeat and a worrying dress rehearsal for their date with City. Southampton, who had 28 shots, peppered the worst defence in the division – Villa have not kept a clean sheet on the road this season – and Marvelous Nakamba and Douglas Luiz were painfully overrun in midfield. There was equally little encouragement going forward, with Mbwana Samatta starved of service and Jack Grealish subdued by James Ward-Prowse. Villa’s single shot on target came midway through the second half.

“The players have let themselves down with their personal performances,” Smith said. “I said to them before the game ‘we’ve got 13 cup finals.’ We got deservedly beat and players have played themselves out of another cup final next week. My feelings are embarrassment with the performance; it was a dreadful performance. They have to show me what they’re about. There’s too many training-ground players – if you want to play in the Premier League, you’ve got to go and perform on a match day. If you want to be a Premier League player, you have to go and perform week in, week out. I’m sure there’ll be a few players cowering behind the scenes when we do a debrief.”

Villa’s anguish was Southampton’s gain. Will Smallbone, a 20-year-old academy graduate who joined the club aged eight, showed touches of class on his first Premier League start, receiving a warm ovation as he departed late on. Together with the captain, Pierre-Emile Højbjerg, the hosts suffocated Villa. Ward-Prowse, another alumnus from the Southampton academy, was again excellent as an emergency right-back, shackling Grealish. “Prowsey, especially against players like Grealish and Zaha, can really dig into such a challenge and he is nasty to play against,” said Ralph Hasenhüttl, the Southampton manager. “This is what I hoped and he was often the fire-fighter in the last moments and did a fantastic job. It shows his fantastic character that you demand something and he says ‘no problem, I’ll do it’.”

It took only eight minutes for Southampton to breach a discernibly frail defence, with the lively Moussa Djenepo beating Ezri Konsa to the byline before cleverly hooking a cross towards the front post with the outside of his right foot. Long was lurking and managed to steady himself to instinctively divert the ball beyond Reina with the top of his thigh. That proved the start of things to come, with the electrifying Djenepo, who has a tendency to flicker from the sublime to the ridiculous, twice going close to doubling Southampton’s advantage.

Villa’s tepidness left Smith seething on the touchline but his players had nowhere to hide. They eventually conceded again when the substitute Che Adams superbly released Armstrong, who had earlier gone close after seizing on a mix-up between Reina and the fit-again Tyrone Mings, after the Southampton goalkeeper Alex McCarthy punched a Villa corner clear. Armstrong struck to put Villa out of their misery, firing home from a tight angle. But they got off lightly.

“It was a perfect afternoon,” said Hasenhüttl. “The only negative was that we had so many chances. The risk is always there, and you will never be calm if you know you are only one up, but maybe that is the reason we stayed so concentrated until the end. But the way we scored the second one was a fantastic moment because the celebration was big.”