Aston Villa comment: No longer a one-man band under Dean Smith

19 goals in six games, eight of those on unfamiliar ground - there's no doubting this side's ability to find the back of the net, but what's arguably most refreshing about it is how there's no reliance on one individual to dictate the club's performances.

Last season it was clear to see, when Jack Grealish played well, Villa played well. When he didn't - well, neither did the team.

Go back two seasons and it was Jonathan Kodjia cementing his status as 'King' with his prolific goalscoring essentially deciding whether or not fans left Villa Park smiling or scowling.

Before that, there was a tremendous reliance on the likes of Christian Benteke to provide the goods in the Premier League, when he departed for pastures new the club floundered.

Simply put, Villa have been a 'one-man team' all too often in recent years. But that's no longer the case...

Yes, under Dean Smith we've seen the emergence of Tammy Abraham as Villa's chief goal threat. But he's not wholly relied upon to dictate results.

Anwar El Ghazi has stood up and provided goals - his latest rocket could (and should) have been a match-winner over West Brom, but for a sly hand from Jay Rodriguez.

James Chester, Glenn Whelan, Alan Hutton, Kodjia and Grealish have all contributed on the score sheet in recent weeks - Conor Hourihane and John McGinn have themselves played key roles.

That's not to mention contributions from Yannick Bolasie and Birkir Bjarnason, who have both started to flourish under the tutelage of the new head coach at Villa Park. The latter you'd imagine would be starting regularly but for the groin injury which ruled him out after defeat to QPR.

When teams travel to B6, they are no longer playing with the focus on stopping one player, they now face a host of capable options brilliantly coached by a man who's settled quickly into what many would argue is the one of the toughest jobs in England, if not the toughest, outside of the Premier League.

When Smith first stepped in, there were plenty of questions being asked.

Can he handle a club the size of Villa? Will he live up to the expectation? How long will it take to see his free-flowing football grace the turf in Aston?

The answers? Yes. Yes. And around four weeks or so.

Nobody could have predicted just how quickly Villa would take to Smith's style. Our very own Walsall reporter Joe Masi, himself having witnessed his style of play engraved on a team, said that he hoped Smith would be given time and that his appointment would likely begin to bear fruit next season. That's not exactly a ringing expectancy of fluid football in less than a month.

But that's what he's supplied, an Aston Villa team which regularly create chances, have lengthy spells dominating games and ultimately win football games - all whilst inheriting a defence which was about as convincing as Theresa May's parliamentary footing.

Even that much-maligned back line has shown signs of improvement under Smith - barring of course that one chaotic 5-5 draw with Nottingham Forest, which is looking more and more like an anomaly worth forgetting about.

What's more staggering though is that he's managed to do all of this without being able to bring in a player of his own choosing.

Admittedly, few Championship head coaches can boast a squad similarly talented to that of the one available to him at Villa Park, only Stoke and West Brom can realistically claim to have the same calibre of 'big name' players at their disposal. But even then, many fans had pictured a bedding in period lasting far longer than consecutive defeats away to Norwich and QPR - a pair of performances which weren't deserving of zero points, by the way.

The 1-0 win over Swansea did the business in his first game before those aforementioned defeats, but following that - the players have grasped onto Smith's vision and quickly become one of the form teams in the second tier, epitomised by their showings in the past six games.

A large contingent of those games have been up against fellow promotion rivals too.

If the 3-0 win at Derby was a statement, the subsequent demolition of Middlesbrough at The Riverside was a dossier signalling the club's intent to finally climb out of the Championship - or at least make an even more convincing attempt to do so compared to last season.

Now Smith has even more ample opportunity to extend his current run against those rivals who are rightly looking over their shoulders at this climbing claret and blue side.

Stoke and Leeds both face what they'll now surely consider daunting trips to Villa Park before Christmas, whilst a Boxing Day trip to Swansea tops off the 'horror' run of fixtures which has so far done little else other than strike fear into the hearts of claret and blue detractors across the second tier of English football.

If he gets through this trio of fixtures with this unbeaten run intact, imagine what Smith could do with financial backing and the ability to suggest players who will meet his philosophy to those who now splash the cash at B6.

If teams were worried about Aston Villa now, they could be petrified come the end of January...