JAMES MILNER believes Aston Villa should take encouragement from their away performances last season when they tackle Liverpool at Anfield tonight.

The winger admits Martin O’Neill’s side have to put on a better showing than in their home league defeat to Wigan and the loss away to Rapid Vienna in the Europa League play-off.

But Milner takes heart from Villa’s record of 10 league wins on the road during the 2008-09 campaign, although they were thrashed 5-0 at Liverpool during a dismal end to the season.

Milner said: “I don’t think it’s a good or a bad thing that we’ve got Liverpool next. It doesn’t really matter. You’ve got to play everyone at some point in the season. Obviously they had a bad result at the start of the season but they’ve come back strongly with a win against Stoke so we’ve got to bounce back quickly as well.

“It’s never an easy place to go but it’s early in the season and we need to find our form. We showed signs of that against Rapid, when we passed the ball around well, so we just need to get into our stride a bit quicker.

“It’s a hard game whenever you play at Anfield but it’s up to us to go there and play better than we have done in the two previous games and keep improving.”

Milner added: “We obviously had a disappointing day at Liverpool last year.

“With the quality we’ve got here, we should never lose by that margin so it would be nice if we could bounce back and get all three points.

“We’re a good team away from home as we proved at the Emirates Stadium last year so we have to go out and put on a performance.”