Aston Villa 1 Fulham 1 match report: Paul Lambert raises a glass to... - The Independent

For those of a glass half-empty marketing, it absolutely was a of two points fallen by Aston Villa on a where Sunderland's derby success 24 hours later sent the Birmingham side falling one place in the table to 17th, three points away from a side with two games at hand. Nevertheless for Paul Lambert, the Villa manager, the glass remained half-full, despite seeing Fabian Delph's own target reject his staff an important victory against Fulham. "We are playing well, the experience is great, the positivity is good," explained Lambert a and with some reason, given that his team's new upturn has gotten 10 items from their last five journeys, a improvement on the 13 games it got to assemble the previous 10. Property sit stage on 34 points with Stoke and Sunderland, and just one single behind Norwich, and Lambert's view is that after having a season-long struggle, his young staff are better prepared to cope with the stressful ultimate days than rivals freshly sucked in to the mire. "We have been down there a lot of the year and the problem isn't new to us; what is happened now is we have produced clubs engrossed who have not been there, and each of a sudden they'll not be very sure what is planning to happen," he said. "You have to handle the stress that arises from being down there." If not at their best on Saturday, Villa still designed enough chances to win the game and the feeling in the stands was far from the doom and gloom seen at different relegation-threatened clubs recently a' an undeniable fact not lost on Martin Jol, the Fulham manager, whose own team reached the 40-point level with this pull. "To maintain this position must certanly be difficult but [Lambert] has established an atmosphere that most people are behind him and this is what you need and what other professionals will say a probably what Martin O'Neill said [at Sunderland], and what [Tony] Pulis said at Stoke," Jol said. "What is happening now's the team are moving off that," included Lambert and the crowd here's really behind us. Villa will have to keep this good mindset in the months ahead as next Monday's trip to Manchester United heralds a hardcore run-in that sets them against relegation rivals Sunderland, Norwich and Wigan, along with the Chelsea team that beat them 8-0 in December. Villa have conceded in 17 consecutive league games but Lambert promised they would "give it a at Old Trafford, that glass half-full once again.