Former Aston Villa defender Gareth Southgate has urged his old club to stay focused on survival.

Southgate insists they must keep their nerve this time around in what is gearing up to be a tense battle to hold on to their Premier League lives.

"It doesn't matter what has gone on up until this point, it's about making sure you're better than the teams around you over the next 12 games," he told the Birmingham Mail.

"We have talked about experience a lot this season but the experience is there now, they know what they have to do. This season would have been difficult for everybody there, I'm sure, but they now know what they have to do to get results.

"They have a period of games where they have got to perform better than three of the teams around them. They will feel capable of doing that but equally the other teams down there will feel the same.

"There's not a lot to choose between the teams down there at the moment."