Jordan Ayew produced his best performance yet for Aston Villa on Tuesday night as they edged through to the fourth round of the League Cup with a derby victory over Birmingham City.

The Ghana striker has come in for criticism since joining Villa in the summer but his display when he came on for Gabriel Agbonlahor at the second half has been widely praised.

Birmingham were dominating the game before the Ghanaian attacker came on in the 46th minute and caused lots of problems for the defenders of their opponents.

Rudy Gestede headed the only goal of the game the Benin striker powerfully nodded in left-back Jordan Amavi’s left-wing cross from 10 yards just after the hour mark.

Blues had the better of a highly charged first half at Villa Park but Villa got on top after the break to earn victory over Gary Rowett’s side.

Villa could have won by more, Kuszczak saving spectacularly from Scott Sinclair and Jordan Ayew, whose fellow half-time substitute Jack Grealish was inches away from stealing in at the far post.

Ayew had his best game in a Villa shirt and on 76 minutes his drive across the face of goal was almost bundled home by Grealish at the back post.

Two minutes later Ayew wriggled his way around three Blues defenders and set-up Veretout on the edge of the area.

Sinclair tried to steer the former Nantes star’s shot into the bottom corner in almost identical circumstances to Saido Berahino’s winning goal for West Bromwich Albion at the weekend, but unlike the Baggies man he failed to master that art.

Soon after both Grealish and Ayew combined again.

This time the Solihull-born star played in his Ghanaian team-mate but somehow Kuszczak denied him a deserved goal by clawing away his effort that looked destined for the top corner.