Aston Villa send Sherwood packing after sixth successive loss

Swansea City midfielder Gylfi Sigurdsson believes that his side showed great character after coming from a goal behind to beat Aston Villa 2-1 in the Premier League.

But Sherwood is not anxious about the axe. He added: “I feel like the club is in a hole”.

“We’ll stay in the Premier League but we need to improve, obviously”.

As results went from bad to worse Sherwood was openly critical of the club’s recruitment policy, hinting that numerous 13 players brought in during the summer at a cost of £52.5million were not his choices.

The 46-year-old’s abrupt departure gave him the unwanted record of overseeing the shortest spell of any permanent Villa manager and he also lasted only six months as Tottenham boss. A few sources close to the former Everton and Manchester United manager suggest he would welcome the chance to return to the Premier League and say that the Villa job appeals, yet the feeling in Spain is that he would not be prepared to walk out on Real Sociedad.

“We can not do more as coaches and managers”, he told reporters after Saturday’s defeat. We didn’t see much of this when Alex McLeish or Paul Lambert left. They have got to improve surely, they have got to improve and I’m expecting them to improve to keep us in the league. That game was a toss of the coin match.

Villa are now languishing in 19th position, propped up by only Sunderland, with a paltry 4 points from 10 games. I make the players focus on football.

“I think it was a bit of handbags on the pitch, and obviously when you lose the game emotions are running high”. It was never going to be easy because of the circus which has gone on this week.

Sherwood remained typically defiant on Saturday evening after the defeat to Swansea and insisted he had not had any contact with the club’s owner Randy Lerner and that he would continue working flat out to improve the team’s situation.

It stemmed from when Federico Fernandez and Micah Richards confronted each other in the first half and had to be separated by team-mates.