Dean Smith took a moment, as he left the pitch after his first relegation as a manager, to return the applause coming from all four corners of Villa Park. The moment came just after Norwich’s sixth demotion from the Premier League, a record, was confirmed.
As Burnley mounted their late comeback to win at Watford and move away from Norwich, goals from Ollie Watkins and Danny Ings helped Aston Villa to their first victory in six matches. It left Villa on 40 points, all but securing their own status.
Steven Gerrard was gracious enough to pay tribute to the job his predecessor did at Villa Park and to predict Norwich will, once again, be challenging for promotion next season.
“I’m disappointed for Norwich and Dean but it was always going to be a massive mountain to climb and I’ve got no doubt they’ll be one of the favourites to come back up,” said the Villa manager, who took over after Smith left here in November.
Smith will be remembered at Villa for the thrilling run to their playoff triumph in 2019. His nous in the second tier, where he also thrived with Brentford, should be a positive factor for the archetypal yo-yo club.
“Unfortunately, over the season, our performances haven’t been good enough,” Smith said. “We’ve lacked the quality required in this league.
“My reaction is bitter disappointment and I take full responsibility. Over the last four or five weeks there’s probably been an inevitability about it. We haven’t improved enough to stay in the league but there’s certainly a lot to work with. There’s some really good players at this football club that I think can get better but they’ve found the step to the Premier League a bit hard.”
The all-important first goal came after an enforced change. Leon Bailey was substituted with an ankle injury and the first touch from Ings, the substitute, led to Watkins firing home his ninth Premier League goal of the season.
Watkins was a livewire all day, volleying just over in the sixth minute and constantly threatening to get in behind. His goal always looked likely to provide the springboard for Villa to play on the counterattack while allowing Norwich to enjoy relatively harmless possession.
The England striker’s explosive finish came within a minute of the first-half substitution that encouraged Gerrard to make a key tactical change. After Bailey, who had had a superb left-foot shot tipped on to the crossbar by Tim Krul as Villa chased an early breakthrough, went off, the emergence of Ings allowed Villa to switch to a midfield diamond, with Philippe Coutinho at the tip.
Ings took up a position high and wide on the left and his first contribution was a long diagonal that sent Watkins running away into the inside-right channel in a one-on-one battle with Brandon Williams.
As Watkins headed the ball up, Williams slipped, and Villa’s leading scorer composed himself before lashing home a right-foot shot, diverted slightly off the covering Sam Byram, high into the net.
Ings headed against the post early in the second half as Villa continued to make chances. Norwich came closest to scoring when Emi Martínez made a brilliant save from Milot Rashica midway through the first half, but Villa deserved the win, which was sealed in stoppage time when Emi Buendía’s attempted control fell for Ings to swivel and shoot home.
Gerrard said his side looked better when they had two up front but wants the option of playing with different systems. Either way, he wants his team to be more ruthless.
“It helps when you play with top strikers,” he said. “I would like to have more killers in the team, as we had chances to score more than two goals. If we were ruthless earlier, I think we would have run away with the game. But in terms of Danny and Ollie, I’m really pleased with them.
“I want the top end of the pitch to be unpredictable, I want to have options and I want to have players who can create different problems to make us versatile. But the back end of the team has stayed pretty much the same and we’ve had five clean sheets out of nine, and two in a row, so we’re doing a lot of right things from a defensive point of view.”
