Confidence is still lacking, but we showed spirit – Garde

Remi Garde: Happy to claim battling point

Remi Garde: Happy to claim battling point

Aston Villa boss Remi Garde admits his side are working hard on their confidence – but hailed their battling qualities in the 1-1 draw at Newcastle.

Villa went behind in the first half to a rare Fabricio Coloccini goal – but Jordan Ayew’s curling effort ensured Garde’s bottom-of-the-table side took a point in terrible conditions at St James’ Park.

Despite allowing Newcastle to have the best of the game, Garde was able to take positives both from the result and the way his players reacted in adversity.

Garde said: “You know, maybe this is the point that we will need at the end of the season, and then I want to be optimistic regarding the way we reacted in the second half.

“Of course if you look at the first half, obviously for me it’s a lack of confidence of my players coming into the game and saying, ‘We don’t know exactly what is going on’.

“When you are bottom of the league, the confidence is not straight away within the game. We have to battle for that and when we are in a situation where we have nothing to lose, we start to play and that was the case this afternoon.

“The difficulty is to do it for 90 minutes, this is our problem currently, to play a whole football game with intensity, to win the duels at the start of the game.

“We have to work on that and the next game will be very important, it’s very, very important for us.”