Steve Bruce: Aston Villa 'gifted' victory to Derby
Frustrated boss Steve Bruce accused Villa of “gifting” victory to Derby after falling to a 2-0 defeat at Pride Park.
Goals from former Villa striker Andreas Weimann and substitute Johnny Russell earned the Rams victory.
But Bruce felt his side were masters of their own downfall, after an error by Glenn Whelan allowed Weimann to open the scoring on 24 minutes.
Robert Snodgrass had an effort cleared off the line as Villa, who remain fifth in the Championship, looked for a way back.
Yet any hopes of salvaging a point were ended when Russell struck in stoppage time.
And Bruce fumed: “We made so many, especially the first 20 minutes. I can’t remember us making that many all season.
“From the very first minute we made an error which put them through on goal and didn’t really recover.
“Individual errors happen. You just don’t need them to happen in a big game like today.
“It’s something we have to eradicate because we’ve made far too many mistakes,
“When we analyse it, we’ve huffed and puffed but we’ve gifted them the game, really.
“A big game of this magnitude the disappointing thing was the number we made. We made so many it was scary.”
Whelan only succeeded in feeding Matej Vydra to set-up Weimann with an attempted backpass.
Bruce said: “We’ve all made them. Glenn is an experienced international football and there’s nobody more disappointed than he will be today.
“However he’s been very, very good for us and he will continue to be. Up until then (the mistake) he was playing very well.
“But he made a mistake and you have to get on with it.”
Villa were without striker Keinan Davis due to illness, meaning midfielder Josh Onomah was utilised as a makeshift centre-forward.
Scott Hogan and Gabriel Agbonlahor were both brought off the bench in the second half as Villa hunted a leveller.
Bruce said: “In hindsight you could say maybe I should have started one of them but I decided to go the way we did.
“Formations, systems, all the rest of it, I expected it to be better. You can have as many strikers on the pitch but if you keep making individual errors, like we did in the first half, it makes little difference.”
