Gareth Barry had no excuses for Villa's miserable no-show at Tottenham, admitting they got off lightly with a 5-1 thrashing.

The stand-in skipper was distraught after Villa's heaviest league defeat since the 5-0 loss at Blackburn in January 1998.

His penalty-kick was the one bright moment on a dreadful afternoon and Barry admits they were the architects of their own downfall after a defensive howlers. Barry said: "The lads were all disappointed because we let ourselves down.

"You can't expect to go to places like Tottenham and get anything when you concede three goals inside 20 minutes.

"It started badly and the day got worse. They could have had more than five and, although we had a few chances in between, Stefan Postma pulled off a few saves.

"The score of 5-1 certainly didn't flatter them and the size of the defeat shows how badly we played.

"We've got young players and experienced ones who have to learn from this.

"We can't come to paces like Tottenham and think it is going to be easy because they've got quality strikers and are a very good team."

Villa's players felt aggrieved that an early penalty shout didn't go their way after Mark Delaney was sent crashing to the deck by Erik Edman.

Barry said: "The referee made his decision and they went straight up the other end, we lost concentration and they scored the first goal.

"To be fair, we came back into it for the middle part of the game and played okay.

"We won the penalty and started the second half looking quite lively but once the fourth goal went in we looked very flat and that killed us off really.

"The first goal was a big set-back but one goal wasn't too bad and we still felt we could get back into it.

"But there were defensive errors all round - one of the goals came from a set-piece which was especially disappointing because we had been working on defending those."

Barry is trying to remain upbeat with two games still to play against Manchester City and Liverpool.

He said: "There are six points to play for.

"We'll try and win both our last two games and finish as high as we can."