REUTERS – Under pressure Aston Villa manager Tim Sherwood is certain his side will start picking up points if they match the performance levels they showed in Saturday’s 2-0 loss to Chelsea.

Villa have failed to win since beating Bournemouth on the opening weekend and are second from bottom in the league following a run of seven defeats in eight matches.

No team has lost more league games than Sherwood’s men and the pressure is mounting on the former Tottenham Hotspur boss, who is the favourite among British bookmakers to be the next Premier League manager to be sacked.

Sherwood was targeting all three points when they host an out-of-sorts Swansea City on Saturday to improve confidence at the Midlands club.

“We can’t feel sorry for ourselves. It’s about dusting ourselves down and moving on to the next one against Swansea this weekend,” Sherwood told the club’s website (www.avfc.co.uk).

“I was encouraged with a lot from the Chelsea game — we went to Stamford Bridge and matched the champions.

“We have belief. Obviously not winning games doesn’t breed a lot of confidence. But it’s encouraging for me how positive the boys are. They realise they can match teams like Chelsea and we have to take into the next game, which is very important.

“We go into the game with plenty of desire and determination. But we do need to get that extra confidence boost which three points brings,” he added.

(Reporting by Shravanth Vijayakumar in Bengaluru. Editing by Patrick Johnston)