Aston Villa 1 Everton 1: A point is better than nothing but still so much work needed

It would be easy for me to write a post about the result and leave it at that, but I'm going to write something about the football instead and I'm going to break it down into three parts.

First, the first half and we were poor. The thing is, I'm not sure if was because Everton are that much better than us, we just didn't look up for it.

Now to the second half and for bits, we looked better, but we didn't shine. We didn't stand out. But we did look better at the beginning of the half, but then it evened out and became just an Aston Villa side that were fighting more.

What I can say about individual players is that Stephen Ireland is quickly becoming our most influential player and it turns out he only needed games. Robbie Keane also came on for 10 minutes and well, when you have him for only two months, you have to question why he didn't start, it just didn't make sense.

But, he looked fresh and he will make an impression, but at the cost of one of our players and I think that is sad. Much like I think it was sad that Guzan was dropped today.

Don't get me wrong, I understand why, I just think it harsh. You see, with keepers, competition is everything and it appears that it doesn't matter how good he does when he comes on, as soon as Given is fit, he will play. I don't think he will stay and I think he might have done enough to get a few other clubs interested in him.

But, Given made some very good saves today and we don't know what Guzan would have done. He might have let them all in, but he might have saved them, much like he might have saved the Everton goal. We just don't know.

Darren Bent also scored for us, which is a massive positive - he is all about the goals.

But the result is the result. The football wasn't inspiring and at times it was quite poor, but it was nice not to lose - had we lost that would have been the first time in 49 years we had lost five in a row at Villa Park.

At the end of the day

You know, I thought we were going to win today, I really did but you know what, the draw was the smart bet and that is what we got. Wolves up next and we need to want this game more than them otherwise we could end up with the same result and then with us needing to beat Arsenal or QPR for the manager to continue his one win every four games, it could start to get desperate.