Gerrard Charges Aston Villa Stars To Step Up After Nottingham Forest Stalemate
Steven Gerrard has charged his Aston Villa stars to step up after they failed to fire in a 1-1 draw with Nottingham Forest on Monday.
Villa had to rely on 37-year-old Ashley Young to bring them back into the game after falling behind to Emmanuel Dennis' opener for the hosts.
Victory would have taken Villa up to ninth on the table but instead they find themselves in 16th position with just two wins from nine games.
Gerrard's men boast some wonderful attacking players but they have only scored seven goals all season, each coming from a different player.
Pressure has started growing on Gerrard, who took over in November 2021 and the former Liverpool captain has rallied his top players to improve on their performances.
"The important thing is how I get this team to be more potent," Villa boss Gerrard told Sky Sports.
"[For] Effort and application a lot of our play is OK until you get to a certain point. But look around the dressing room and you see [Philippe] Coutinho, [Emiliano] Buendia, [Ollie] Watkins, [Danny] Ings and [Leon] Bailey will be back soon.
"I need these players to step up and provide big moments and go and be headline writers for us."
"I don't think there was too much wrong with the performance up to a certain point," Gerrard added.
"It was a fantastic strike and it was one of a few moments of quality in the final third. Ashley [Young] is leading by example for us at the moment and we are really pleased with him.
"We are grinding at the moment. We are close to turning draws into wins, but to do that we need big players to step forward for us and give us a little more quality in the last bit of our play. In the last couple of games we are going away frustrated."
Aston Villa host Chelsea next in the Premier League this weekend.
