Martin Laursen last night insisted Villa can and will improve - despite opening the Barclays Premier League season with a 4-2 win against bogey team Manchester City.

The Danish international, who captained Villa against City, was delighted with a four-goal second-half blitz as John Carew and Gabby Agbonlahor started the campaign in style.

But, ever the perfectionist, Laursen is looking to tighten up at the back.

He told www.avfc.co.uk: "We can't concede too many goals like we did last season. It would be great to eliminate that and still score a lot of goals.

"We know we can improve defensively and we will continue working hard to do that. We are good enough as a team to cut down on the goals we concede

"But we are still happy with the start to the season we have made. If we can keep scoring goals and start to concede fewer goals that is perfect.

"It is a new defence with a new goalkeeper and that will not develop overnight. The new guys played well.

"Brad is a good goalkeeper, you can see that. I thought Luke Young and Nicky Shorey played well but it takes time to play together and be comfortable together.

"But we'll get that right. We have to look at it as a whole team and we know we need to do better defensively."

Laursen continued: "It was a great way to start the season. To score four goals at home and to win the game was just the perfect start.

"Gabby was fantastic. He can be so dangerous and he's a good player. He can be strong holding the ball up, he's quick and he showed he can score goals. It was a great performance from him.

"It was important to get off to a winning start. We have done well in our important games in the pre-season. We got the right result in the Intertoto Cup and we played well in Iceland on Thursday.

"So we went into this game looking for another win. We played well and I think we can be happy with the way things are going for the club. We conceded a couple of goals again but the most important thing was that we won."