Dean Smith felt Aston Villa were well below their best as they held out for a draw against Brighton and Hove Albion on Saturday night.
A Premier League point was secured with a 12th clean sheet of the season as the visitors battled hard to shut down a fluent Brighton attack.
Smith was disappointed in Villa’s display at the Amex Stadium and was relieved to avoid defeat.
He said: “I’m not happy and I take no pleasure in the performance, but I’ll take the point obviously.
“We take pride in our performances and here our performance wasn’t very good. We’ve looked good in training and prepared well, but it looked like a bad touch became contagious and a bad pass became contagious.
“Brighton are a good team – they recently beat Liverpool, beat Tottenham. I got into them at half-time because I didn’t think they were good enough and I thought we played a little bit better in the second half, but it didn’t take a lot to do that.”
Emiliano Martinez was once again excellent in the Villa goal, saving his side on a number of occasions.
The Argentinian made stunning stops to deny Joel Veltman, Leandro Trossard, Neal Maupay and Dan Burn – and his display was appreciated by his head coach.
Smith said: “We needed him because we gave a lot of free-kicks away on the edge of our box and they worked the ball well into our penalty box.
“We needed him. It was one of those nights where we really needed him and he’s kept his 12th clean sheet.”