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Dean Smith: "Disrespectful" to call Aston Villa a one-man team

Dean Smith has claimed it is ‘disrespectful’ to describe Villa as a one-man team after backing others to step up and fill the void left by Jack Grealish.

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The skipper will again be absent when Villa visit Leeds on Saturday evening as he continues to manage a shin problem.

Villa have lost all three Premier League matches Grealish has missed since winning promotion back to the top flight in 2019. But Smith feels the suggestion his team are overly dependent on the 25-year-old is unfair.

He said: “You can’t just be talking about the likes of Jack when you have the likes of Ollie Watkins, Ezri Konsa, Bertrand Traore, Ross Barkley and John McGinn.

“I think we have a very good squad of players and for me it is disrespectful to that squad of players when people are talking about us being a one-man team.

“We all know what a good player Jack is, he is a top class player and everyone in our dressing room knows that and are thankful he is with us and playing for us.

“But we believe we are a good team and a good team needs 11 players to be playing at a good level.”

Smith again insisted Grealish, who had started 48 consecutive Premier League matches before sitting out last Sunday’s 2-1 defeat to Leicester, will not be sidelined for a long period.

But the nature of the injury, which requires the skipper to rest until he is pain free, makes it difficult to accurately predict when he will return.

Villa are confident they have caught the problem early and do not expect a repeat of the 2018-19 season, when playing through the pain barrier caused Grealish to miss nearly three months.

“The latest is he’s still got a little bit of pain, not too much,” said Smith. “As ever with Jack, whenever he’s involved with anything, there’s an awful lot of speculation.

"I know I was a little bit vague last week but I can't speculate. I know, certainly, that a lot of people were speculating that he was going to be out for this amount of games, or weeks.

"But I don't know, Jack doesn't know and the doctor doesn't know how long this will be. It's not long-term. He could be back for Sheffield United on Wednesday, that's how the injury is."

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