Dean Smith: Aston Villa must move on quickly from derby collapse

Smith and his players spent yesterday at Bodymoor Heath reviewing the wreckage of Saturday’s chastening 3-2 loss to rivals Wolves.

Villa were two up and cruising before conceding three times in the final 15 minutes to suffer their fourth defeat in eight Premier League matches.

But while promising to learn the lessons of their alarming collapse, Smith has urged his players to move on quickly as their focus turns to the Gunners.

He said: “We will put Saturday’s result behind us. As disappointing and painful as it is now, there is nothing we can change.

“For 80 minutes we were comfortable and that is against a good team in Wolves. They didn’t do an awful lot to score their goals and that is the disappointment because we should have defended them better.”

Goals from Danny Ings and John McGinn appeared to have put Villa in command but both Romain Saiss and Conor Coady profited from poor defending at set pieces, before Ruben Neves’ heavily deflected free-kick five minutes into stoppage time completed the turnaround.

Smith said: “It is a difficult one to process when you are on the sidelines and you don’t feel a tactical change or change of momentum.

“We certainly won’t have any problem making sure we are ready for Arsenal.”

Smith had described Villa’s defeat as “a travesty” in the immediate aftermath and he explained: “For 80 minutes there was only team that would win the game and we defended our goal really well until those set pieces.

“At half-time I spoke to the players about using the space down the sides a bit more as I didn’t think we utilised that, especially with the running ability of Oli Watkins and Danny Ings.

“We got a good goal and I thought we defended well and got a good second goal. I thought we would go on and win the game. but the set pieces changed that.”