What fuming Aston Villa boss Dean Smith said about Sheffield United's 'sloppy goal' and Phil Jagielka red card

The Blades went into the lead thanks to David McGoldrick’s goal – from a move that he started and finished – and then went down to ten men after a VAR intervention,

Phil Jagielka took out Anwar El Ghazi around the midway point of the United half and was initially given a booking by referee Robert Jones.

However, the official was instructed to take another look and he deemed that Kean Bryan wouldn’t have got across to block the Villa winger and Jagielka harshly received a red card.

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From then on United batted away everything Villa threw at them, with a terrifc display of courage and heart to hold out for their fourth win of the season.

And Smith was left fuming at his team for not making the extra man count.

"Very, very frustrating from our point of view, he said. “We had the best chances in the first half and went in a goal down. I can’t remember Emi (Martinez) being worked all game, we conceded a poor goal by not following David McGoldrick and it was a really soft goal.

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"I feel we had been on top of the game and started the second half well. We moved the ball a lot quicker, had a lot of half chances but the big change of the game was the sending off.

"We didn’t show enough quality to make it count. We had a couple of big chances but they were made by the players themselves, and we should have created a bit more.”

Smith added: “We shouldn’t be leaving with nothing, we threw points away with a sloppy goal. It feels like we’ve given points away today.”

On the red card, the former Sheffield Wednesday player admitted it was a close call.

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"I’ve seen it back, they’ve gone across and have a question to ask about the covering man and whether he’d have got across,” he said. “No-one knows if he would or not, it could have gone either way and it went our way, but we couldn’t take advantage of it.”