Aston Villa 1 Fulham 1 match report: Paul Lambert raises a glass to... - The Independent

For anyone of a glass half-empty marketing, it had been a of two points dropped by Aston Villa on a where Sunderland's derby victory 24 hours later sent the Birmingham side sliding one place in the table to 17th, three points away from a side with two games in hand. However for Paul Lambert, the Villa boss, the glass remained half-full, despite viewing Fabian Delph's own purpose reject his team a valuable victory against Fulham. "We are playing well, the experience is good, the positivity is good," explained Lambert a and with some justification, given that his team's current upturn has gotten 10 items from their last five journeys, a improvement on the 13 games it took to collect the previous 10. Property sit stage on 34 points with Stoke and Sunderland, and just one behind Norwich, and Lambert's view is that following a season-long struggle, his young group are better equipped to deal with the tense remaining weeks than competitors just drawn into the mire. "We have been down there most of the year and the situation is not new to us; what's happened today is we've introduced clubs engrossed who've not been there, and all a sudden they will not be very certain what is going to happen," he explained. "You need to handle the stress that arises from being down there." If not at their finest on Saturday, Villa however made enough chances to win the game and the mood in the stands was far from the doom and gloom experienced at different relegation-threatened groups recently a' a fact not lost on Martin Jol, the Fulham director, whose own team reached the 40-point level with this draw. "To take this position must be hard but [Lambert] has created an environment that many people are behind him and this is what you'll need and what other administrators can say a likely what Martin O'Neill said [at Sunderland], and what [Tony] Pulis said at Stoke," Jol said. "What is happening now could be the team are moving off that," added Lambert and the crowd listed here is really behind us. Accommodation will have to maintain this positive mind-set in the weeks ahead as next Monday's trip to Manchester United heralds a hardcore run-in that pits them against relegation opponents Sunderland, Norwich and Wigan, as well as the Chelsea team that beat them 8-0 in December. Villa have conceded in 17 consecutive group activities but Lambert promised they'd "give it a at Old Trafford, that glass half-full once again.