Danny Ings hailed his Aston Villa teammates after they bounced back from Steven Gerrard's dismissal in midweek to record an "extremely special" victory over Brentford.
First-team coach Aaron Danks was tasked with leading the team after Gerrard was sacked almost immediately after Thursday night's chastening 3-0 defeat against Fulham - and the change sparked an instant response from Villa, who ran riot in the first-half to record a 4-0 win over the Bees.
Villa swarmed over their opponents from the off and were three goals to good after just 14 minutes courtesy of Leon Bailey and a brace from Ings. Former Brentford striker Ollie Watkins netted a second-half penalty to cap a memorable afternoon for Villa, who had slumped to 16th in the Premier League during Gerrard's tenure.
And Ings admitted that players "owed" that performance to the fans and that the squad has been underperforming for too long. Speaking after the match, he said: "We owed the fans that performance and result. It was a good reaction from the boys.
"Naturally you always see a reaction from a team when something happens like it has this week with the gaffer leaving. For what we have in the dressing room it was quite simply not good enough and hasn’t been for a long period of time.
"[It is] Extremely special. It is so hard to pick someone out from today’s performance. The crowd really helped us today. You could see everyone coming together at the end and there is no better feeling than that."
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Danks was also left delighted by Villa's rampant first-half showing, and he praised the character of the squad after the match. He told BBC Sport: "Really happy. I thought the boys from the opening five minutes they played with intensity and sustained that. I am really, really pleased with the game and performance.
"Going into the game you always have a bit of nerves and apprehension but the moment I was on the touchline I was just focused on the performance. To see the fans and players at the end it was a nice feeling. It was a really worked set piece off the training ground for the first goal so credit to the staff for that and the players for executing it.
"I had to pinch myself. We asked for energy, we asked for lots of endeavour and work rate and the boys brought that. The gameplan was a lot of phycological stuff as well, about our attitude and application and togetherness. We felt for a few weeks this was coming. We had put some good performances in but the goals were just missing. Today we were clinical and ruthless and today is the result you get from that.
"I have been asked to lead the team at the moment and will continue to do that and will step forward Monday morning to prepare the team as we go and until I hear otherwise it is full focus and energy on that."
