Leicester City caretaker boss Adam Sadler admits defeat at home was tough to take.
The Foxes put up a fight at King Power Stadium and Harvey Barnes pulled themselves level after Ollie Watkins had opened the scoring.
A red card for Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall changed the momentum and the visitors were able to press home their numerical advantage when Bertrand Traor scored a stunning winner.
In terms of the result, of course we're deeply disappointed," Sadler said. We'd set up with a plan and an idea to try and contain Aston Villa tonight. Having gone behind in the game, I was pleased with the response of the players to stay positive and stay on the front foot and try and make sure we clawed ourselves back into the game with a fantastic goal.
It's typical Harvey Barnes. It's a fantastic first touch, I think that's the really big moment in the goal. That sets him up to do what Harvey does, cut inside and place it in that bottom corner.
We've seen him do that a number of times and we see him do it almost daily in training. I'm really pleased with the quality of the goal and it's a shame it wasn't a goal to win a game.
The timing of their second goal is disappointing. You're hoping you can see it through to at least take a point from the game, but it is what it is, we can only learn from that. We've got to get our group back together and prepare for Saturday."
Responsibility for training and match preparation has been led by two of the Club's long-serving coaches, with Sadler aware of the need to pick the players up once more.
We've only had a very short time to work with the players yesterday (Monday)," the 43-year-old explained. It's really just reminding them of the situation. They know the reality and we've got to do something about that immediately.
The idea tonight was to be as difficult to beat as possible, to be really strong and compact as a block, hard to get through and break down. And on the back of that, to try and catch Aston Villa on the counter attack, which we nearly did.
We can only be proud of the performance and there's a lot of learning to do. Of course, there's certain little things we can improve, and we have to do that before the weekend. But that's the challenge we face, so we have to get our mind on that now."