Lewis Grabban hungry to help Aston Villa win promotion

Grabban is a striker whose eagerness to play might lately have had the unfortunate effect of making him appear a footballing nomad.

In turn it overshadows a more than steady career goal-scoring ratio of better than one in three, which finds him just two short of 100 league goals.

Villa will be the 11th club Grabban has played for and the third he has joined on loan in the space of 12 months.

But this failure to find a steady home is not down to a lack of success. Grabban helped Reading to the brink of promotion last season, while netting 12 in just 19 appearances for a struggling Sunderland outfit earlier this term.

“It can be difficult, moving around,” he says. “You would like to be a bit more stable. But sometimes at your parent club, if you are not getting much time, you have to go and seek football.

“It’s not always the right fit. You might not want to be there on a permanent basis.

“It is somewhat frustrating but I’ve found if you keep playing, it usually works itself out.

“I just have a hunger to compete. I don’t want to be training on a Saturday, that’s what it is. It is why I have taken loans and not sat around doing nothing.”

Grabban had returned to parent club Bournemouth early last month with the expectation of being sold but the month wore on, another loan became his best option.

“In the press it came out that I wanted to go back (to Bournemouth),” he said. “That’s not true, I was happy at Sunderland.

“I was playing week in, week out and scoring goals, who wouldn’t be happy?

“The clubs agreed what they agreed and that was that.

“I’m here now and to be honest I’m pleased it has worked out this way because I’m now here at Villa.

“Hopefully I can get scoring and help the team winning games.”

Grabban has been brought to Villa to add competition and cover for a forward line which has been hampered by injuries.

Yet he also has plenty of experience at the top end of the Championship, having been part of the Norwich team which won promotion in 2015.

Having made his debut as a 17-year-old at Crystal Palace, Grabban’ initially struggled to find his feet in the senior game before scoring 21 goals in League Two for Rotherham during the 2011-12 season.

“I maybe took things for granted when I was younger,” he says. “Consequently, I found myself falling down the leagues. I left Palace, moved to Millwall, then Rotherham. That was a wake-up call.

“That was the period when some players fade away. The ones who stick with it come back up.

“It can make you lose belief. When you start at a decent level, you have to drop, its difficult. Lots of players do it and have good careers. It’s character building as well.

“It gets to the point where, what else are you going to do? You need to crack on and make a proper living out of it. That was what I decided to do.”

Having spent more than a month out of action, Grabban expects to be up to speed and competing for a place quickly.

The key to promotion, be believes, is simple.

“You need a real belief that you can do it,” he said. “We have the squad here and the players. The club is set up to be in the Premier League.

“If you believe it and do what you do, you can get there. It’s what I’ve found out in the past.

“You can’t win every game. When I went up with Norwich I remember we lost about four or five on the bounce. You just can’t afford to lose confidence.”