Leon Bailey believes Aston Villa have to learn from a difficult defeat to Newcastle United and bounce back as quickly as possible.
Villa’s 17-match unbeaten home run in the Premier League came to an end as Fabian Schar’s quickfire brace in the first half was followed up by Álex Moreno’s unfortunate own goal.
Ollie Watkins’ 50th Premier League goal for the club, courtesy of an assist from substitute Bailey, provided hope of a revival - becoming only the third player to achieve the feat for Villa.
Yet Unai Emery’s side suffered their first league defeat at Villa Park for almost a year and only their second reverse in 16 matches in all competitions.
“From the beginning, it was very difficult, as you could see,” Bailey told VillaTV.
“We know they’re a very good team and have a very good structure.
“Their style of play, for me, watching it from the side was very difficult for us and they pushed us to the limit.
“We had to defend a lot in the first half. It was a very difficult game.
“We’ve won a lot of games previously so we’ve just got to learn from this as much as we can and try to bounce back as fast as possible because we still have a lot more games to go.”
Villa went into encounter on the back of three successive clean sheets and unbeaten since Boxing Day.
They will now be looking to get back to winning ways against Sheffield United at Bramall Lane on Saturday.
And Bailey insists there remains plenty to be positive about and look forward to.
“We have the FA Cup coming up next week, a league game on Saturday, the Conference League is coming back. We have a lot of games,” he said.
“We just have to learn from this, as I said before. We can’t win every game and we just have to accept when we lose and when the other team has been better than us. I think they were better than us.
“Accept it and move on, and hopefully we can continue being consistent and the Aston Villa we’ve been so far this season.”
You can watch Leon's full interview below...
