By Paul Brown

Paul Lambert has called on his Villa players to "pick themselves up and go again" after the frustrating 4-1 defeat at Southampton.

Lambert was reasonably pleased with the first-half display but called the performance after the break "not good enough."

However, Lambert said there was little point dwelling on the disappointing loss, with the focus shifting swiftly to the Manchester City Capital One Cup game on Tuesday and the derby match with West Brom on Sunday.

He said: "If you're not bang at it, that's what can happen.

"We deserved to go one-up at half-time but you have to sustain that. In the second half it wasn't good enough. We got beat.

"Now we pick ourselves up and go again.

"We defended too deep every time. The midfielders had a lot of running to do and I don't think we squeezed the game up the way we should have done. I take responsibility on that.

"Losing Stephen was a blow too because I thought he was playing really well. But there's still no excuse for that. We needed the second goal. One is never enough.

"I never get too high when we win and I never get too despondent when we lose. They gave us the effort and I can't fault that. We will keep cracking on.

"It's important to try and keep a level head. It's a long, long season and I'm sure there will be ups and downs.

"We have a really tough game against Manchester City now and then a derby game against West Brom which should take care of itself."

Despite the loss, Lambert saw some promise in the Darren Bent/Christian Benteke partnership.

He added: "It was Christian's first start and I thought he was a handful. Darren is a goalscorer. It will take time.

"Darren got the goal but I'd rather win than anything. That's the game and you have to pick yourself up and go again.

"Christian will do really fine for us. It was his first start. He will be a handful.

"You always look for positives in the game but ultimately you are trying to win a game of football, which we never did."

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