James Milner: We're pushing hard to put things right
James Milner stressed the need for Liverpool to continue putting the hard yards in after returning to winning ways in the FA Cup on Friday evening.
The Reds advanced to the fourth round of the competition by beating a young Aston Villa side 4-1 to end a three-game run without victory.
Sadio Mane opened the scoring at Villa Park inside four minutes before Louie Barry restored parity with his finish close to half-time.
The visitors responded after the break, however, by netting three goals in the space of five minutes, with Mane, Georginio Wijnaldum and Mohamed Salah all converting.
Read on for Milner's reaction to the game from his post-match interview with BT Sport...
On the result and the young Villa side...
A good set of lads, honest, worked hard for each other, quality. They put a shift in – we expected that, we didn't want to take it for granted. First half, getting the goal, we had to keep playing. We got the result in the end but I think it's not an ideal situation for either team.
On Liverpool's start to the tie...
When you're saying chances, we're getting into areas but not getting the right final ball, the right run. That's been the story of the last few games as well, so it's good for us to work on that and we need to keep improving. You can never fault the effort of us but at times things aren't quite coming off at the moment and we need to keep working hard. You saw the attitude of the boys – they're pushing hard to put things right.
On what was said at half-time...
I think obviously we needed to do some things better. I think we started pretty well with the counter-pressing and pressed on the ball, but then maybe didn't get it right – especially for the goal [we] let them out of a couple of situations in the corner where they shouldn't have got out. They're good players, they're at Aston Villa for a reason. Every single time you're not quite there, you're going to get punished. They took the goal and we had to lift ourselves again.