Town boss Mick McCarthy says the Blues now need to add to the strong defence which saw them to Tuesday’s 1-0 win at Derby with more forward options now at his disposal.
"Defending is a skill,” former centre-half McCarthy said. "You have to have talent to do it.
"When you watch games on television and see teams that have got players that can’t defend, that step out, that don’t block things or duck when headers come in, get too tight or don’t get tight enough the pundits can all pick the bones out of it.
"Then they all want to talk about the beautiful game, the great shots, the great goals, bits of skill. They can thrive if you can do all the other stuff.
"What we need to do is put the bits of other stuff on, but we’ve got some good forward options now Freddie’s back and once Didzy’s back and Jonny Williams, Tom Lawrence is in the team now.
"We’ve got Besty who we’re just trying to get up to full fitness, Reg came on and scored the other night, so maybe we can pose more of a threat rather than having to sit in and defend.
"But if we were playing against a good team and that’s the way it happens I’ll still take a clean sheet all day long.”
Reflecting further on Tuesday’s defensive display, he added: "It is pleasing because it was all the attributes that I talk about that you’ve got to have in a team. It was a display which was really organised and disciplined, the number of blocks we got in was great."
Town's two away games illustrated the zero to hero nature of the game with Jonas Knudsen having given away the last-gasp controversial penalty at Reading before stopping Nick Blackman's seconds-from-the-whistle effort at the iPro Stadium.
"Anybody that thought Jonas Knudsen was a villain on Friday, he was certainly the hero on Tuesday, and that’s football," the Blues boss continued.
"He blocked it. I thought it was Bart that had saved it but it wasn’t, it was Jonas behind him who blocked the ball.
"That would have done damage to me had we conceded a goal at that stage having thwarted everything they’d thrown at us, a very good team, I might add. That would have seriously upset me!”
Half-time subs Varney, who scored the winning goal, and debutant Lawrence both impressed their manager.
"I was very pleased with all of them, and Bish came on and helped shore it up, making sure we didn’t concede,” McCarthy said.
"But I thought Tom and Reg were excellent. Reg getting his goal was just fantastic because for some while he has been a big part of the squad, of the team, has not played that often, but has always contributed when he's come on.
"I remember him against Reading [at Portman Road last season] when I put him and Pits on and he broke down the left-hand side and crossed and we scored in the last minute.
"And he’s always there to contribute. I went 4-4-2 and it suited us in that game in that second half and we got a win out of it.”
Villa have let leads slip in the final minutes of their last two games, home draws with Nottingham Forest and Brentford, while the Blues conceded deep in injury time at Reading last weekend.
"It could be 0-0 to the 85th minute and a three-all draw Saturday, couldn’t it? All the goals conceded in the last minute, that would be good,” the Town boss joked.
The Blues played their midweek game at Derby on Tuesday while Villa played on Wednesday but McCarthy doesn’t feel the additional day’s rest will have any impact.
"We went to Derby and they’d been beaten by Newcastle on the Saturday and you wonder whether an extra day’s rest would be better for them,” he continued.
"Well, they didn’t look tired, did they? They didn’t look like they’d suffered at all.
"And apparently their confidence was pretty fragile. It didn’t look it to me. Did it to you?
"They played very well, they passed the ball well, they moved it. The one thing they couldn’t do was score because we’ve got good defenders and a good goalkeeper.
"So I don’t know whether it’ll have any effect on them. You just worry playing a team like this that they don’t just turn up and it’s their day, that they turn up and all of a sudden every one of them plays well and it clicks and you think, ‘Wow, where’s that been?’.
"I think that’s the danger with teams with so much quality, that on any given day it could be their day. We’ve got to stop them having their day.”