Norwich City are RELEGATED from the Premier League after 2-0 defeat at Aston Villa

Norwich City are the first team to be relegated from the Premier League this season after losing 2-0 at Aston Villa.

The defeat, coupled with Burnley’s dramatic comeback win at Watford, means it’s mathmatically impossible for the Canaries to avoid the drop as they sit 13 points from safety with four games remaining.

Goals from Ollie Watkins before the break and a second-half injury-time strike from Danny Ings propelled Villa to victory and condemned Norwich to their fate.

The writing had been on the wall for Norwich, who sacked Daniel Farke as manager in November for Dean Smith, for sometime this season and it is now the third-successive time they have been immediately relegated following promotion to the top flight.

Norwich ‘will try everything to come up again’

Smith said ‘plans are already in place’ for their bid to return to the Premier League.

‘I think over the past four to five weeks, there’s probably been an inevitability about it,’ he said.

‘I’m disappointed that we got relegated today because I thought our performance was good, but unfortunately over the season, the performances have not been good enough and we’ve lacked the quality required in this league.

‘[The players] are very down, very dejected.

‘We will try everything to come up again. It is a very difficult league to stay in. I spent £125m at Villa [after promotion in 2019] to keep us up.’

Norwich have the fewest shots (336), fewest shots on target (100) and lowest shot conversion rate (seven per cent) of all Premier League sides this season.