Dean Smith: Three points the big thing for Aston Villa

Conor Hourihane’s second half strike saw Villa edge past the Canaries 1-0, snapping a four-match losing streak.

Though they remain in the bottom three, the gap to safety has been cut to just one point and though Smith acknowledged the performance was not the best, he hopes his players will have renewed confidence ahead of another six-pointer at Watford on Saturday.

“Getting three points was the big thing, certainly with our recent results and performances,” he said.

“I asked for three things from the players which was attitude, application and enthusiasm and they gave me that.

“They also showed a lot of character as well. We weren’t at our best by any means but what a result like that can do for people and the whole place can be massive for us.

“It was a battle. It wasn’t going to be a pretty game. These are two teams who like to play good football but two teams who are struggling for results at the moment and scrapping for results.

“Everything in this league you have to earn and we earned it today.”

Hourihane came off the bench to fire in his third Premier League goal of the season, following superb work by Villa skipper Jack Grealish.

The latter enjoyed an excellent match and came in for special praise from the boss, who said: “Jack thrives on pressure. We lost one of our best players in John McGinn, but Jack showed what he is all about.

“He showed great leadership and great maturity in his performance.

“He wants the ball anywhere and he'll handle the ball anywhere, even if it's in our box, like we saw in the last minute, he was calming everyone down and giving it to Elmo to win a throw-in to see the game out.

“But he's also creating things in the opposition box as well.

“I wanted to get him closer to Wesley in this game. Wes worked his socks off and you can see the supporters willing him to do well and willing all of the players.

“He can get better still. There's still more to come. This is his highest goalscoring season of his career and he's starting to make a lot more assists now and he's doing it at the top table, so there's certainly more to come.”

Norwich boss Daniel Farke was shown a yellow card by referee Chris Kavanagh after angrily protesting Villa’s goal, having been convinced the hosts were wrongly awarded a throw-in in the build-up.

But Smith said: “I don't know what the actual debate was about. I thought it was our throw-in when Ezri kicked it out as our lad was running.

“Elmo got the ball and there was a bit of an altercation between the two of them.

“But there was a long way to go before we scored!”