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Villa lost Karim El Ahmadi and Andreas Weimann to injury within a minute of each other in the first half, but Lambert said on Sky Sports 1: "We were definitely second best. That wasn't good enough.

"We got off to a really good start, within five minutes things were looking okay - we lost a couple of lads to injury, Andy and Karim - but (beside that) we were still second best.

"We had a really good start and got a really good goal, but the goals we lost were really, really poor.

"We take nothing away from Stoke, they deserved to win the game.

"(The injuries) do disrupt you a little bit but I'm not going to use that as an excuse."

Next up for Villa is a trip to Manchester United next weekend and Lambert is confident his side can put in a good display following last week's 1-0 victory over league leaders Chelsea.

He added: "We'll be really up for it. Like the Chelsea game, no one expects us to get anything.

"It's a great game to play. As a footballer you want to play these sort of games and it's up to us to try to get something from them."