Aston Villa manager Steven Gerrard has admitted he is already starting to worry about losing his job after seeing his team lose four of their opening five games of the season and slip into the Premier League relegation zone.
Villa haven’t been thrashed at any point and lost by just a single goal in their two most recent outings against West Ham and table-topping Arsenal. But the defeats are already starting to mount up, with only bottom place Leicester worse off at this early stage of the campaign.
Gerrard had made himself a hero at former club Rangers, delivering the Glasgow side’s first Scottish title in a decade in 2021. But he left behind a more comfortable existence to test himself at a more competitive level in the Premier League.
The ex-England captain arrived at an ambitious Villa in November a few days after Dean Smith was sacked, hoping to secure the club’s first top half finish in the Premier League since 2011.
A run of just two wins in Villa’s final 11 league games of the season resulted in a disappointing 14th place finish in the end. Summer recruitment and the chance to oversee a first pre-season gave reason for optimism, although Villa have already lost new £26m centre-back Diego Carlos to injury.
And with results not coming – other than a win over a poor Everton – pressure is building.
“Of course I [worry about my future], I’m really honest and self-critical,” Gerrard said.
“I’ll do my job to the best I can do, I’ll step forward, I’ll take the responsibility in the best way I can. But if I stood here and said to you that I wasn’t concerned, I think you’d look at me as if I was from a different planet.”
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