Steve Bruce: Scott Hogan starting to feel at home with Aston Villa

In-form Hogan netted twice inside the opening seven minutes at Villa Park, taking his tally to four in three games.

The 25-year-old had not scored in the Championship this season prior to Villa’s 5-0 rout of Bristol City on New Year’s Day.

Before then, he had only found the net once in the league since a £12million move from Brentford last January.

But Bruce believes Hogan’s confidence has now been restored, after admitting the former Rochdale hitman had experienced “dark times” when injury and poor form threatened to leave his Villa career in the starting blocks.

“If you could discover what confidence is and bottle it, it would be worth a lot of money,” said the boss.

“It’s like anything in life, you get that when you’re confident and you feel good in yourself, you just can’t wait to go and play next week.

“When you’re not, you become a little more sheltered. I’m pleased for Scotty because there’s no doubt he’s had some dark times.”

Bruce continued: “In my experience with strikers, they’re never happy unless they score.

“They can play well - like a midfield player - and the team wins but a striker, if they’re single-minded like Scotty, wants a goal.

“If he doesn’t score he doesn’t think he’s contributed. We tried to say, ‘Come on, it’s not just all about you scoring’.

“Can he beat himself up? Yes, he’s guilty of that. It’s our job to keep reminding him but him scoring a goal against Bristol has seen him come alive. That’s important.”

Conor Hourihane also found the net, after Dimitri Cavare had netted to briefly bring the visitors back into it, as Villa marched to a fourth straight league win.

All four goals came in the first 19 minutes of the game and Bruce, whose team now sit just three points behind second-placed Derby, was delighted with the first-half performance.

“For an hour I thought we played very, very well,” he said. “For the last 25 minutes we left a lot to be desired but I was always comfortable.

“We didn’t get the fourth one just after half-time. We had two or three chances and it could have been one of them afternoons.

“In the end it was comfortable but for an hour in particular I was pleased.”

He added: “We’re on course at the moment. I think we’ve lost four in 25 (league games) now and we’re going along quite nicely.

“You can’t take anything for granted and if you need proof of it: would you expect Millwall to go to Leeds and score four? Would you expect Nottingham

“Forest to turn over Wolves? Nothing shocks me in this league and that’s the beauty.”