Hendrie wants winter signings
Lee Hendrie has called for Aston Villa manager David O’Leary to be given the financial backing to significantly strengthen his squad in January if the club are to push for a European spot.
O’Leary is confident of winning the race to sign Southampton’s £6million-rated striker James Beattie after failing with a bid last summer.
But his arrival would only go so far to bolstering an injury-ravaged squad that even at full strength is amongst the smallest in the Barclays Premiership.
Hendrie believes O’Leary needs to be able to bring in four players if Villa want to be competing strongly at the top end of the table.
The strain on their depleted resources is beginning to show and Tuesday’s 1-0 home defeat by Manchester United means they collected just one point from six games in December.
Hendrie told PA Sport: “We know the squad is thin. The gaffer has stated that and we obviously know that.
“I don’t know who would be on the bench this Saturday against Blackburn if someone had got injured on Tuesday against United.
“Hopefully we’ve got a few players coming back in the new year and that could give us a bit more strength because if someone got injured right now the physio might be one of the substitutes!
“We are down to the bare bones. It is no secret that we do need some players to sign in January and hopefully we’ll get a couple in.
“But if we are going to be competing for things like Europe, we do need four players and hopefully that happens because it would give us a lot more strength and competition for places.
“It’s happened before. We get to the one step and we don’t push on further and maybe if we can get a couple of decent players in, we can push on and people will also be fighting for their places.”
Despite the recent poor run of results, Hendrie insists that the confidence in the Villa squad has not taken a battering.
He said: “We have got to have a good month now and make sure we push back into that pack chasing the top six.
“I don’t think the confidence has been affected by this run. We played some decent stuff against Chelsea and Man United over Christmas but we didn’t have that end product.
“The boys are still looking lively and we’re not down. It’s a long old season. We’ve got the second half of the season still and we’ve got to kick on now really.”
