"I'm hoping for another positive year ahead, even though I don't look too far ahead. I try to take things as they come."

Grealish will hope to launch another positive year when West Ham head for the Midlands on Monday evening, and a change in the club's recent fortunes might help.

Villa lost their opening Premier League fixture at Tottenham 3-1 after reaching the 86th minute at 1-1, and were then made to pay for errors against Bournemouth before opening their top-flight account with victory over Everton.

However, they were aggrieved to lose by the only goal at Crystal Palace last time out when, after midfielder Trezeguet had been dismissed, a late Henri Lansbury equaliser was controversially chalked off by referee Kevin Friend after he ruled that Grealish had dived during the build-up.

Grealish said: "For us as a team, it's been a long break waiting to get back to it.

"We're sitting here on three points out of four games. We should definitely have a few more. We've dropped points where we could have come away with them.

"But that's the Premier League for you. Let's hope for a few more ups this month."

Manager Dean Smith is confident there is more to come from his promoted side, but has demanded greater consistency.

He said: "I feel we can improve. We held Tottenham until the 86th minute; you can look back and say two individual errors have cost us against Bournemouth; then we beat Everton.

"Against Palace, if Trez hadn't got sent off, there's not a chance we'd have lost the game – and with what happened at the end, we shouldn't have lost it anyway.

"So we're tough to beat, but we haven't played as well as we can. There's a lot more to come. We have shown glimpses of what we can do. But we need to be more consistent in the domination part of our game."