Pepe Reina: Plenty for Aston Villa to be positive about

Son Heung-min’s strike deep into stoppage time, following a mistake by defender Bjorn Engels, condemned Villa to an agonising 3-2 defeat.

But the performance of Dean Smith’s team was not without positives, particularly during an opening period when they took the lead and put the visitors under sustained pressure.

Villa, who remain a place and a point above the bottom three, travel to Southampton on Saturday.

Goalkeeper Reina said: “Let’s take heart from the performance we put on the pitch (against Spurs). It happens, we all make mistakes. Engs (Engels) has had a brilliant game but, unfortunately, it happens. We need to cheer him up because he’s been fantastic.”

“We have to take the positives as a team, we showed a great performance.

“During training over the last week or 10 days after the winter break, the team have done very, very well.

“A lot of rhythm and pace in training and that’s the only way to stay up.

“I think the team has shown a great performance. We believe in the three points all the time and that’s the only way to keep Villa up. We believe in that.”

The finish to the match was particularly cruel on Reina, who earned the man-of-the-match prize with a series of impressive saves.

The on-loan AC Milan keeper had denied Son on three occasions in the second half.

He had also saved a first-half penalty, which the South Korea international then bundled home at the second attempt to put the visitors 2-1 up.

“He made some really good saves,” said boss Smith. “On top of that, his distribution is what he gives us as well.

“Tottenham had chances, but at 1-0 up we had chances where we could have put the game to bed and couldn’t quite take them. In the second half, we knew they were strong on the counter-attack and that we had to try and stop them.”