Smith hails the progress made by his in-form Aston Villa side
Dean Smith hailed the progress made by his Aston Villa side ahead of their Premier League trip to Chelsea today.
Smith celebrated his 100th game in charge of the club he supported as a boy with an impressive 3-0 victory over Crystal Palace on Boxing Day that came despite Tyrone Mings’ red card before half-time.
Villa tore the Palace defence apart, with Bertrand
Traore, Jack Grealish, Ollie Watkins and Anwar El Ghazi all producing impressive performances.
Having narrowly avoided relegation in their first season back in the top flight last term, Villa are challenging at the other end of the table this time.
Saturday’ s win lifted them into sixth place, just above today’s opponents on goal difference.
Smith said: “Our ambition at the start of the season was to be competitive in every game we play. No-one was happy with finishing 17th.
“We’re progressing as a football club and we need to make sure we maintain that.
“We’ve had a big turnaround in these 100 games. Getting promoted in the first season, bringing in 13 new players, managing to retain our status. We were fortunate to only have to bring in five quality players this summer.
“We’ve had a really good start to the season so far. I think we’ve got great maturity growing within the team even though I think we’re the youngest team in the league. It certainly bodes well for the future.”
Villa’s energetic display ensured they coped admirably with going down to 10 men against Palace, and Smith also highlighted the fitness work done by his players.
He added: “I know they are fitter. It’s something we worked on during lockdown. We wanted to get the running numbers higher.
“I think you can see from a counter-attacking aspect just how fit they are. I think we’re getting to a really good level now.”
Villa will definitely be without Ross Barkley and Mings for today’s game.
Bark leyh as been sidelined for a month with a hamstring injury but could not play against his parent club anyway while Mings serves a one-match ban and will be replaced by Ezri Konsa, who returned from illness as a substitute on Saturday following Mings’ red card.