Herd urges Villa to get show on road with win at Swansea

Striker Darren Bent was unable to make an impact for Aston Villa against his old club Spurs (Getty Images)

Chris Herd has called on his Aston Villa team-mates to bounce back from their disappointing performance against Tottenham Hotspur by claiming their first away win of the season at Swansea City on Sunday.

Villa's wretched away form continued on Monday night when they were outclassed by Tottenham, who ran out 2-0 winners at White Hart Lane. The away side barely registered a shot on target and their sloppy ball retention allowed Tottenham to dominate a match in which dual scorer Emmanuel Adebayor let several other chances go begging.

Herd said yesterday: "We came to Tottenham fully confident of coming away with a result, but didn't get it and we are disappointed with that, especially with the fans travelling such a long way to come and see us. Now we have to go back to the training ground, talk as a team to find out where we went wrong and try to fix those problems.

"Hopefully, we can bounce back and get a result at Swansea. We have a massive ground and great fans at Villa Park so we are obviously good at home, we now just need to improve our away form. We are a confident team. We will pick ourselves up and go on to the next one."

Much of the pre-match talk had centred on Darren Bent's return to White Hart Lane for just the second time since the Spurs manager, Harry Redknapp, sold the striker to Sunderland two years ago. The 27-year-old, who has gone on to become a regular England squad member since leaving Sunderland for Villa Park, barely got a look-in thanks to two top performances from the Spurs centre-backs Ledley King and Younes Kaboul.

Bent was keen to show his former employers they had made a mistake in letting him go, but Herd thinks the striker's failure to deliver at White Hart Lane will not affect his recent good form in the coming weeks. "Darren will keep on being a great player for us," Herd insisted, "his confidence won't be affected by what happened here at all."