Aston Villa 1-1 Leicester
Simon Williams
at Villa Park

ASTON VILLA manager Remi Garde admitted that it has taken time for him to turn the club’s fortunes around.

The league’s bottom club, who ended a run of 19 games without a win with victory over Crystal Palace just over a week ago, came back from a goal down to draw with high-flying Leicester City on Saturday.

And Garde believes his side are finally showing signs of improvement. He said: “Sometimes it takes time. If there is pre-season it’s probably because it’s useful and when you don’t have pre-season to work with your team it’s more difficult.

“If the pre-season was useless then we would just have a meeting a day before the first game of the season and say ‘lets go’.

“I didn’t have this time and when I arrived the team had lost seven games in a row. I know my face was new in the dressing room — my language as well — but it doesn’t take hours to put the things right.”

The Villans were behind just before the half-hour mark when Shinji Okazaki poked the ball home after keeper Mark Bunn had done well to keep out a Jamie Vardy effort.

The visitors had the chance to double their lead minutes later only for Riyad Mahrez to miss his second successive penalty having failed to convert his last effort against Bournemouth.

And the miss would prove costly as substitute Rudy Gestede levelled the scores midway through the second-half to earn Villa a deserved point.

But despite still being nine points from safety, Garde insists it’s not too late for his side to avoid relegation. He said: “There are 16 games to go and it will, of course, be very difficult. But I didn’t see players who are not believing in the target. We are still believing in that.”