Curtis Davies believes the size of Aston Villa's squad was overblown as the reason to their second-half season slide.

The defender said: "The size of the squad can be talked about but we got to February and were still flying.

"People can say we then petered out but we were out of the UEFA Cup then and we had no more of those games to worry about. We were just playing Saturday to Saturday.

"We just didn't keep our form up. Obviously if you have a bigger squad you can freshen things up - but the players who were there never really complained about it and kept going."

Davies admitted: "We have been very surprised at having the indifferent spell we did. We achieved a new club record of successive away wins and went from that to not winning for more than 10 games.

"We finished on a bit of a high and, although we wanted to finish fifth, gaining more points than last season is progression.

"It is massive for the club to progress."