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Aston Villa’s senior stars are fully behind Paul Lambert’s newly-introduced playing style.

The club’s first-team squad are said to be enjoying their football more than ever after the manager recently changed his tactics.

While supporters have questioned the ‘slow and sideways’ approach and slammed into Lambert and his team for their chronic lack of goals, the players are confident that a shift in fortune is just around the corner.

And despite the discontent in the stands, the spirit in the camp is surprisingly high ahead of the trip to basement boys Leicester City on Saturday.

Stand-in captain Ashley Westwood said: “The way we’ve been playing is really enjoyable.

“We’re keeping the ball and moving teams around the way that they used to do to us.

“We feel like we are progressing.

“It’s just about being patient now.”

Westwood operated in the middle of a back three against Blackpool on Saturday but was shifted into his usual deep-lying midfield position after half an hour as Villa controlled the game.

He says that the team are more comfortable dominating games rather than chasing them, and that opinion has been backed up by other top performers.

The general feeling from the team is that it’s only a matter of time before the real benefits are reaped, and in the meantime they’re happy to work on ways to make it more effective.

“What we’ve found in the last few weeks is that teams have come and sat off us,” Westwood continued.

“It’s tough to break teams down when they play like that.

“Even the likes of Chelsea and Man City struggle at times and when the top teams go abroad they have the same problems, too.

“We’ve got to be patient, keep moving the ball around and keep wearing teams out. That’s what teams did to us last year.

“We managed to do it against Blackpool in the end but that was only after we started moving the ball quicker in the second half.

“The last ten minutes we felt it was coming and in the end it did.”

Lambert will stick with the ‘new way’ at Leicester after already experimenting with the set-up away from Villa Park.

PICTURES - Villa v Palace: FA Cup action from Villa Park:

In the 1-0 defeat to Swansea on Boxing Day the claret and blues out-played their opponents and if goalkeeper Lukasz Fabiankski hadn’t been in such fine form that day they would have taken at least a point from the contest.

What’s important for Villa now is to start converting draws into wins to further distance themselves from the bottom three.

After the East Midlands trip Villa have a tough run of fixtures against Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea however there’s a feeling in the camp that those are the type of games that will suit the new style.

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Westwood added: “It’s real tough when teams just put ten men behind the ball and sit on the edge of your box.

“I think the Liverpool game will be good because they will come at us.

“If we keep the ball off them the spaces will be there and hopefully we can create more chances.”