Dean Smith: Carabao Cup performance is the standard Aston Villa need to set

Villa pushed Manchester City all the way in a match they entered as huge underdogs, before eventually going down to a 2-1 defeat at Wembley.

Attention now turns back to their top flight survival fight. Smith’s men are now in the bottom three following wins for West Ham and Watford over the weekend but the boss took heart in the display against City.

"The performance level is the standard we have to be,” he said. “We were written off after our performance at Southampton (a week previously).

“There's not been too many of those performance and I asked for a reaction and I thought I got that against one of the top teams in the world.

“We take it game by game, we always have. We came here to win a final, to win a trophy but we didn't manage to do that.

“Our thoughts now go onto the Premier League. The fact we're in the bottom three now after the results, we'll take an awful lot of heart from that performance and, if we play like that against many teams in the league, we'll get out of that relegation spot."

Villa, who had been thrashed 6-1 at home by City back in January, showed considerable spirit after finding themselves two goals down inside the opening half-an-hour at Wembley, after Sergio Aguero and Rodri struck for the reigning Premier League champions.

Mbwana Samatta headed home to get Smith’s team back into it just before the break and though they had to ride a storm at times in the second half, Villa came within a whisker of forcing extra time when Claudio Bravo pushed Bjorn Engels’ header onto the post.

Smith gathered his players in a huddle shortly after the final whistle.

He said: "I told the players I was proud of their performance. Against Manchester City, you're going to have to be patient and disciplined because you know you're going to be starved of the ball for long periods. They do it to everybody.

"We saw that in the week at the Bernabeu (against Real Madrid) but, if you can take them and go toe-to-toe with them at the death, Bravo pulling off a great save from a header to stop the game from going into extra time.

“That performance will get you wins against other teams in this league.

"We had that huddle at the end and yes they were disappointed and they'll feel that tonight but they'll wake up with pride tomorrow."