Lambert ready for challenge

Paul Lambert: Plenty of hard work ahead for the Aston Villa boss

Paul Lambert openly admitted that Aston Villa have a lot of hard work ahead of them if they wish to keep their unblemished record of having never been relegated from the Premier League intact.

Steven Pienaar, Marouane Fellaini and Nikica Jelavic were all on target for a dominant Everton side in an emphatic 3-1 victory at Villa Park.

Defender Ciaran Clark was sent off in what was a first home game to forget for former Norwich boss Lambert despite Karim El Ahmadi's late consolation effort.

And the Scot told Sky Sports: "The disappointing thing is you could sense the crowd were wanting us to do well here today. We started okay and then the first two goals put us right on the back foot.

"Then they scored a third and we were thinking 'you have got to try and hang on here' and after you go down to 10 men, you think, 'it's going to get really worse'.

"You can sense it from the stands they want us to do really well but it's up to us to try and rectify that and that is my responsibility."

Asked how big a job this could be, Lambert admitted: "It's a massive job. It's a great challenge and it's something which we'll try and turn around."