Tammy Abraham aims high with Aston Villa

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Aston Villa sounded a warning shot to the rest of the Championship on Saturday with a remarkable 3-0 win at Derby County.

A much-improved Aston Villa romped to a 3-0 win over Derby County at Pride Park on Saturday. On-loan striker Tammy Abraham chipped in with his fifth goal of the Championship campaign.

Abraham, who is on loan at Villa from Chelsea for the season, has told the official Aston Villa website just how special their win was on Saturday.

The young forward was in confident mood when reflecting on his team’s victory and has set their targets very high for the remainder of the season.

“It was unbelievable at Derby. I don’t think words can describe it. Some of the boys say this is the best performance they’ve had since they’ve joined here,” said Abraham.

“We saw the best of us at Pride Park. This is what we have been working on. We have had a month with the new gaffer and against Derby, we applied everything we have been doing in training. We need to build on it.

“As a group, we are a top-class team. Minimum we should be aiming for is play-offs. But I believe we could aim for top two. The performance here shows where we should be.”

Most Villa fans would be delighted with a shot at the play-offs again this season, especially after a slow start under Steve Bruce which left them languishing in the bottom half of the Championship.

For Villa to achieve anything close to what Abraham is aiming for, they will need to hit approximately 74 points. After all, in the last three seasons the sixth-placed team has had between 74 and 80 points after their final game.

They have 29 games left to amass that total. 50 points in 29 league games is 1.72 points per match. Up to now, Villa have managed just 1.41 per game but that was including the Bruce spell early in the season.

Although it is only a very small sample size, Villa have managed nine points in Smith’s first five games which equates to 1.8ppg. So, if this Villa team, that is clearly improving, can manage to average the same form for the rest of the season that they have so far under Dean Smith then they may well be looking at another play-off place in May.

While at first glance the young front man’s comments may seem overly-ambitious, when looking at the figures and how Villa seem to be shaping up under Smith, Abraham’s target might not be too high after all.