Steve Bruce: Glenn Whelan will bounce back

The Republic of Ireland international gifted the Rams a 24th-minute opener when his attempted backpass found Matej Vydra, who duly set up Villa academy product Andreas Weimann to score against his former club.

Whelan’s mistake was one of several made by Villa during a haphazard first-half performance at Pride Park but boss Steve Bruce believes the 33-year-old is experienced enough to quickly move on.

“It is part and parcel of football. We’ve all made them,” said the boss.

“Glenn is an experienced international football and there’s nobody more disappointed than he will be now. However he’s been very, very good for us and he will continue to be. Up until then (the mistake) he was playing very well.

“But he made a mistake and you have to get on with it.

“He wasn’t alone, There were far too many (mistakes) for my liking all over the pitch.

“If you’re going to win a game then you can’t (do that). We gifted them the game.

“When we analyse it, we’ve huffed and puffed but we’ve gifted them the game, really. A big game of this magnitude the disappointing thing was the number we made. We made so many it was scary.”

Villa were hunting an equaliser until stoppage time, when Johnny Russell bagged the Rams’ second goal to seal the result.

Skipper James Chester believes it would be wrong to single out Whelan’s error when assessing the reasons for Villa’s defeat.

“You can’t compensate for errors like that. It’s certainly not something Glenn has done before and I doubt he will do it again,” said Chester.

“It’s one of those things which happen but that error alone was not the reason we lost the game.”