Steven Gerrard says he needs his Aston Villa players to become "headline writers" if they are to improve on their disappointing early-season form, BBC reported.
Villa missed the opportunity to move up to ninth in the Premier League with Monday's 1-1 drawat Nottingham Forest.
While Villa are unbeaten in four, they have managed just seven goals from their nine top-flight matches so far.
"The important thing is how I get this team to be more potent," Villa boss Gerrard told Sky Sports.
"[For] Effort and application a lot of our play is OK until you get to a certain point. But look around the dressing room and you see [Philippe] Coutinho, [Emiliano] Buendia, [Ollie] Watkins, [Danny] Ings and [Leon] Bailey will be back soon.
"I need these players to step up and provide big moments and go and be headline writers for us."
Against Forest, Villa were reliant upon 37-year-old Ashley Young's superb strike to earn them a draw in an encounter where they struggled to create clear-cut opportunities despite having more than 60% possession.
Of their 12 efforts on goal, Watkins was the only other Villa player besides Young to find the target, and they rarely looked like adding to their tally from their 27 touches in the Forest penalty area.
"I don't think there was too much wrong with the performance up to a certain point," Gerrard added.
"It was a fantastic strike and it was one of a few moments of quality in the final third. Ashley [Young] is leading by example for us at the moment and we are really pleased with him.
"We are grinding at the moment. We are close to turning draws into wins, but to do that we need big players to step forward for us and give us a little more quality in the last bit of our play. In the last couple of games we are going away frustrated."
