I’ve said before that Kodjia has spent most of this season on the type of run that means you can be fairly certain that he’s going to score at some time during the match, and that this puts him in a very small group of Villa strikers who I’ve watched over the years. Some of these were instinctive goal poachers with the knack of being in the right place at the right time and the bravery to want to come out on top when the boots were flying. The group Kodjia now belongs to is an even smaller one – there are times when he gets the ball, no matter where it is on the pitch, and you know what the end result will be. There might have been others but the only two players I can think of who gave me the same sense of inevitability were Dwight Yorke and Christian Benteke.

The game against Norwich on Saturday was much the same as most of Villa’s recent performances. It was solid, not spectacular, and it won’t feature for long on any end of season compilation. The visitors will claim that they deserved something from it but apart from one reflex save from Sam Johnstone and a horrendous early mis-kick with the goal at his mercy, from a Norwich forward whose name I never bothered to find out, they didn’t do a great deal with the possession they enjoyed.

Villa did defend too deeply, they did fail to impose themselves in the time from going a goal up until Norwich went down to ten men, and I do wish Steve Bruce would scrap the tactic of bringing everyone back when defending a corner. Taking that into account though, Villa still managed to look dangerous when attacking and came closest to a second goal when Conor Hourihane hit the crossbar. Norwich looked nervy when we attacked and had Villa been a bit more adventurous the game could have been wrapped up long before Kodjia’s opportunist second. You wait seven years for three wins in a row then it comes along twice in a month.

While the goalscorer inevitably took the headlines there were others whose performance was equally valuable. Sam Johnstone continues to improve, I thought Alan Hutton looked composed, Albert Adomah was a final ball away from a top-quality performance while Neil Taylor deserves praise for the way in which he put the trauma of the past week behind him.

With seven games to go Villa are ten points away from the play-off places. In the past seven games they’ve made up twelve points. It’d be nice to think we can continue to make such progress but it’s also fanciful to think it’ll happen. And in any case, I’m not sure the unlikeliest of promotions would be the best long-term thing to happen. This team, no matter how many Championship opponents they beat, would do as well in next season’s Premier League as Villa did in last season’s. Far better to have another year of winning games, of players learning and improving together, and the necessary team strengthening being done over a longer period.

But, and this is the biggest but of all, while players will have to be brought in during the summer regardless, the most important signing Villa could make would be to ensure that Jonathan Kodjia is still here.