“No-one gave us any hope or any chance before a ball was kicked. “I’m really pleased and proud of what the players gave us and no-one can begrudge us a point, and it’s a big point. “But the players need to take that confidence moving forwards. You hope it’s a foundation but it’s only a big point if you reset and back it up against Leicester and Southampton. “The danger is if you think you’re moving in the right direction but don’t reset. There has been a lot of external noise and rightly so, but it’s now for me to lead even more and be stronger. “We need to stick together and keep developing. “I’m not sure on the Coutinho goal because we might have had a second. I’ve seen a legitimate goal but obviously I am going to be biased. “I’ve spoken to the officials calmly, and given them enough time after and asked for their side of it. “The referee blew the whistle too soon. When something is so tight it’s worth an extra bit of time and we could’ve scored a second goal. “The referee did the same at the other end when Ezri Konsa challenged the goalkeeper. “Why did he not wait… Why not wait and then check or let other people check whether it’s a foul? “He was straight on the whistle and that is twice over the 90 minutes. “Fair play to the officials, they recognised that afterwards. It was nowhere near offside. “I’ve just finished my chat downstairs with the players. I tried to be brief because they’ve probably heard enough of me, especially over the last couple of days and weeks! “Losing Matty Cash was a blow because he’s important in how we play because we need his energy and his legs. “Cashy’s got a hamstring situation. We’ll check it out in the next couple of days. He’ll have an MRI scan. “I’m disappointed with that injury but I thought Ashley Young epitomised everything we needed today and he has since I come through the door. “I think when you take over a challenge like this so early in your managerial career it’s vital you have the right senior players. “I’m working with the senior players in situations and Ash is someone who I haven’t had to work with because he’s been there, he’s done it and he’s got that winning mentality. He’s got the standards. “I thought his performance epitomised everything about us today and the supporters… a lot of that should be for Ashley Young because he drove a lot of our players when he came onto the pitch. He was magnificent. “This performance was about team, guts and togetherness. “My message to the players was, ‘Listen to your fans’ reaction, it doesn’t matter if I’m proud, it matters if the fans are proud and they were!’” “I’ve had to tweak a few things and look at myself behind the scenes. “This is not just about the players and pointing fingers. This is about, ‘What can I do better?’ “Do I need to sacrifice what I want to see in the bigger picture? Do I have to sacrifice things in the short term given where we are? “Sometimes you’ve got to take a bit of quality - maybe a few technical and the nice bits - out of your team to put some real blood, thunder and passion in. I think we saw that in abundance. “We went with Ramsey, Bailey and Ollie because we felt that if we could regain the ball in certain areas we would have areas of the pitch we could break in. “We were 1-0 down and wanted to be a little bit braver and brought JJ Ramsey down [into midfield] who gave us more energy and more bursts forward from midfield. “Bouba and Douglas were keeping the ball well for us but we needed someone to release from the middle three and to be more of a threat going forward. “There’s no need to make anything big from it [John McGinn’s substitution on 65’]. John’s important. John contributed today and it was a collective effort today. “This needs to be the base to grow to improve our results and, if that means us waiting a bit more patiently for the nicer football and if it means parking our technical players or play up to be more powerful and more strong and more pragmatic, I’ll do it.” “It’s now for me to lead even more and to be stronger and, for us, I need that support around me. We need to stick together and keep driving this and we will. “It was a nice moment because we’ve worked hard and we haven’t had the rewards in the last couple of fixtures. It was a nice little moment for us as staff because we’ve had to stick together a little bit more over the last few weeks. “We said it to the players, ‘Listen, outside of the dressing room and outside of Aston Villa nobody gave us a glimmer of hope!’ “Inside was about us being galvanised. Nobody gave us a chance outside of that dressing room. Of course our supporters did because they love Villa but that helped us, nobody on the outside gave us a glimmer of hope. Sometimes as a manager that can help you. “If we can take a point off City, we’ve got to have confidence in every game. If we back it up next week then today’s a good point. If we don’t, this will be forgotten about quite quickly.” Steven Gerrard. --- “We talked in the week about commitment, every player who came on or played in the XI gave that extra 1% to get the result. “Even when we win and I concede I can’t sleep at night. “I barely slept last night, I went to bed at 6:30 and woke up at 7:15 so I struggle with defeats, I struggle when I concede goals. But that’s me, I move on. “I love this club, I said it since day one, I love this club and I love being here, I didn’t want to go anywhere. “I owe the fans for always having my back, so I want to repay them, when I see kids with my shirt in the crowd and they shout my name, it makes me want to stay and obviously I fell in love with this club. “I really care about this club and I want to take this club to Europe.” Emiliano Martínez. --- “When you look at that disallowed goal from Coutinho, I think Stevie [Gerrard] is right - it should have been a goal. It was a huge mistake from the referee’s assistant and the referee to blow the whistle. “You see so often now, when players run offside and they do not put the flag up even when it’s four or five yards offside. That one is actually onside, it’s really tight. You could argue they had been hard done by toward the end of the game. “Man City have got away with one. Then the linesman thinks he’s come back from an onside there again. Is it because the whistle’s been blown beforehand [so VAR can’t intervene]? That is a major mix-up between these officials, it really is. That is a mistake. I wouldn’t want to be the man who tells Steven Gerrard after the game.” Jamie Carragher. --- “Them need fi know u name bang!!!!!.” Usain Bolt hails Leon Bailey. --- “Anywhere I go he (Bolt) is going to be a fan so of course right now, he is a Villa fan. “I don’t need to make him, he automatically becomes a fan of the club. I have known him for a long time. “He is a good friend of mine and an inspiration. I am sure he will want to come and see Villa against Manchester United.” Leon Bailey. --- “These last few weeks have been very hard psychologically, a lot of doubts, a lot of disappointments. Apparently that’s the job!” Frédéric Guilbert reacts to his abominable treatment by Steven Gerrard. --- “First and foremost in football you have to motivate yourself. But in terms of the collective I try to motivate the players for every single game. But you’ve got to be professional, that’s what you’re paid to be. “Nothing can change as of now, the window’s shut so there should be a hunger and a will to want to perform and do the best they can. “They are contracted here and I’ll certainly get a feel of all those players of where they are at with their thinking, with what they tell me and the feedback I get and we’ll go from there. “There are obviously a few players who I assume would have liked, or had the opportunity to go elsewhere, like Morgan Sanson, or Nakamba for example. “It is important I have a chat with all these players face-to-face. But they are very much human beings with feelings. You have to understand everyone’s situation. “That is the issue the window brings for a lot of managers and a lot of clubs, when it is five or six games into a season. This is the reason I think collectively managers would like it to finish before the first game of the season because it can affect how people feel at different times.” Steven Gerrard refuses to back down on the self inflicted damage of the bomb squad. --- “I’m very pleased, from a personal point of view [over the retention of Douglas Luiz]. “He is a player I rate very much. It boiled down to being a collective club decision. “Obviously the timing, coming so late in the window, we felt it wasn’t the right decision. “He continues to be an Aston Villa player. I will speak to him this morning and I have no doubts he will reset himself to help us move forward. I don’t see any problem.” Steven Gerrard on a player he had played for just 191 of 540 minutes so far this season. --- “100% focused here!” Douglas Luiz --- “Tough gritty performance. Proper team togetherness, disciplined and hard working. Proud of my Team! Ice bath needed for these legs. UTV.” Ashley Young --- “Team.” Lucas Digne --- “Gutted to have conceded but the lads did great today to get the point! Villa park was rocking!!” Emiliano Martínez. --- “You fans were amazing. Thank you all for the support. Definitely a performance to build on.” Leon Bailey. --- “Tough game today.” Erling Haaland. --- “It was an error from the assistant - I don’t think it was an error from the referee. The assistant has flagged when he’s not offside. Referees are encouraged to let the game flow, but bear in mind that Coutinho came back six, seven or eight yards to fetch the ball. “At that point, if the referee has seen an assistant’s flag, even if he’s encouraged to delay and delay blowing his whistle, given how long it took for Coutinho to come back, in your mind you’re always going to whistle. By the time Coutinho shot, the whistle had long gone.” Former Premier League referee Dermot Gallagher, not known for his judgement blames the linesman for Hooper blowing the whilst against all FA directives. You really couldn’t make up the incompetence of match officials. --- ““We’re in our fourth season of VAR and we’re not operating it well. “These officials don’t get to the Premier League without being good referees. In some ways they have been made to look foolish this weekend by what has happened. They must feel that they’ve been let down. “They have been hung out to dry because there’s no leadership. There’s no guidance, there’s no coaching. “That ultimately has to come down to the person running the organisation (Riley). The interaction between the referee and the VAR is suspect. “One of the reasons for that is you’ve got current referees who might referee on a Saturday suddenly becoming a VAR on a Sunday. I don’t think that’s conducive to good officiating.” Former Premier League referee Keith Hackett tells us what we already knew… it’s never the referees fault. Maybe, just maybe therein lies the problem.