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Dan Bardell moots 'heartbreaking' Aston Villa Women start after 'collpase' v Arsenal
We’re delighted to welcome Sky Sports journalist Dan Bardell as our exclusive Aston Villa columnist as each week he’ll be giving his views on the biggest talking points at the club…
Aston Villa Women will bounce back after their poor start to the Women’s Super League season despite the “heartbreaking” nature of their defeat to Arsenal, according to Dan Bardell.
With no points in their opening three games, Carla Ward’s side find themselves in 11th place. A late opening-day defeat to Manchester United set the tone for the surprisingly lacklustre start, and subsequent defeats to Liverpool and the Gunners have left fans worried.
Their start has been tough, but with Tottenham and Chelsea around the corner, they risk the unthinkable considering their fifth-place finish last season. In their recent defeat to Arsenal, Daphne van Domselaar’s goal was pepper with 28 shots, while the Villans managed just five, showing that something is not clicking in the early stages.
However, Bardell believes the quality of the squad and the coach will prevail and the Villans won’t be “anywhere near” the foot of the table by the end of the season.
Speaking exclusively to Villa News, Bardell said: “I’m not worried. Obviously, the way they lost the game against Arsenal is pretty heartbreaking. The Liverpool loss wasn’t a great performance and they would have learned lessons from that.
“Arsenal is a tough place to go. but to collapse right at the end, conceding two goals in stoppage time and lose a game that it looked like they were going to win will hurt them.
“They’re resilient and they’ve got a very, very good manager. I’m not too worried about it because they’ve had three tough games. They’ve been tight games as well, they’ve narrowly lost games.
“But they’ll be back. There’s no way they’ll be anywhere near the bottom of the table come the end of the season.”
In other Aston Villa news, a journalist has mooted a “unique” international problem for a Villa ace.