Aston Villa boss Dean Smith believes his players showed great “character” as they battled from 2-0 down at home to Hull City to rescue a draw.
The away side capitalised on some first-half errors from Villa and almost went into half-time two goals to the good thanks to Jarrod Bowen’s 10th goal in nine games and Evandro’s strike.
However, James Chester managed to pull one back for the home side just before the break, scoring against his former side.
Hull still looked on course for their seventh straight league victory before Tammy Abraham’s second-half strike earned Villa a point, though Smith’s side are now seven points adrift of the playoffs
And despite a fourth game in a row without a victory, Smith took the positives from his side’s comeback.
I thought the lads showed an awful lot of character to perform like that in the second half, and by having good body language, good attitude and good energy, the supporters got behind them. We got our just rewards, Tammy certainly did, and we should’ve gone on and won but for our quality in the final third.
Smith spoke about the players’ positive body language in the second half after the disappointment of seeing his players throw their arms up in the air following mistakes in the first half.
And the former Brentford boss believes that kind of attitude isn’t what the fans want to see from their players.
We made mistakes, there were arms going up when we made mistakes, and that body language isn’t going to help them with the supporters, if you’re not going out and showing that you’re a united team.
We spoke about that at half-time, and we showed a real togetherness. We showed a lot of character to come back into the game and we should’ve gone on to win it.
Villa will be looking for their first victory in five league games when they host strugglers Ipswich next weekend.
