Bournemouth boss Gary O'Neil insists the scoreline flattered Aston Villa after their 3-0 defeat.
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."