Aston Villa chief Paul Faulkner insists manager Paul Lambert has the board's full confidence.

Villa have picked up 23 points from 21 matches and are 11th in the table. Last season they had 19 points and were 16th in the table after the same amount of games.

"There's been ups, there's been downs," said Villa's chief executive to the Birmingham Mail.

"I think one of the key measures that we look at is there's very clear definite progress from last year, certainly in terms of where we were sat this time last year in the league and points-wise.

"As we get into that second half of the season we're trying to look upwards. I know that it's very close the bottom 10 or 11 clubs, it's very very tight down there.

"But certainly we've had some good results and performances, beating Arsenal at the Emirates, Man City here at Villa Park. Some other good results as well. Southampton was a great result.

"We've got a lot of reasons to be positive going into the second half of the season now."