BOSS Gary O’Neil insisted Cherries’ defeat at Aston Villa was an “even game”, adding: “It was right there for us.”

Cherries lost 3-0 at Villa Park, with an early goal from Douglas Luiz added to late on by Jacob Ramsey and Emi Buendia.

The defeat leaves O’Neil’s men 19th in the table, one point from safety with 11 games to play.

Asked for his assessment of his side’s performance, O’Neil told the Daily Echo: “I don’t think we were well beaten.

“I think the last 10 minutes got a bit scrappy when we opened it up.

“I thought at 1-0 we were right in the game, created numerous opportunities, weren’t clinical enough, didn’t take them.

“We started too slowly, gave Aston Villa a little lift at the beginning, lost some individual duels that isn’t like us, let Aston Villa wriggle out of situations where we had good pressure and then we need to do better from the situations we create.

“The control we had, the amount of times we arrived behind their back four in the football match was a lot and we didn’t manage to convert.

“It was an even game, that doesn’t really look that way now.”

Discussing the last 10 minutes, in which Villa created numerous chances with Cherries having introduced the likes of Antoine Semenyo, Hamed Traore and David Brooks off the bench, O’Neil added: “I’m really disappointed with today, because you now leave and it looks like you’ve gone to Aston Villa, lost 3-0, fairly comfortable for them.

“And the game wasn’t that for a very long time.

“I didn’t like the start, obviously the end was very, very messy.

“The bit in between I felt we just needed to show a little bit more, because it was right there for us.

“We got the game exactly how we thought it would look, defenders had time on the ball, we could access the space behind, we could hit diagonals, arrive at the byline, a high line that we managed to exploit with Dom.

“But unless it goes in the goal, it doesn’t help much.”