Everton 0 Aston Villa 1: Chris Sutton may have shattered a stereotype. Earlier in the autumn, as he recovered from surgery on a long-standing groin problem, the offer of a lucrative return to top-flight football with Martin O'Neill when the alternative was retirement came with a self-imposed proviso.

"If the injury came back, I'd walk away because it wouldn't be right to carry on," said the veteran. "I don't want to waste anyone's time."

So much for seeking merely to top up the pension fund. Aston Villa will already feel that the prolonging of a fine career has proved a worthy exercise, O'Neill's resurgent side chiselling their first away win of the season here to fill third place on Saturday night. Success came courtesy of Sutton's glancing header from a rare flash of quality offered up by a desperate contest. The match-winner may be only an adductor twinge from kissing goodbye to occasions such as this but, for the moment, life at a rejuvenated club is revitalising ageing limbs.

Sutton is 33 and, having been O'Neill's first signing at Celtic, is providing a canny older head among bright young things. He arrived on a season's contract in October after a brief and undistinguished spell at Birmingham, his time at St Andrew's hampered by the groin problems that had prompted thoughts of quitting the game. Yet Everton endured the quality the one-time Blackburn forward still possesses.

There was rugged hold-up play and the occasional neatly delivered pass here to go with the faint touch he got to Isaiah Osbourne's cross, after the midfielder had been fed by Gabriel Agbonlahor's fine gallop, to score Villa's winner and deflate the hosts.

Thereafter, with Andy Johnson's confidence fragile and Tim Cahill crocked, Villa stifled the Merseysiders sufficiently to secure a first success here in six years. "No one's getting carried away," said Sutton afterwards. "But it's an away win and we have a lot of good young kids, which is healthy for the future. But we know we have a long way to go."

O'Neill knew what he was recruiting and he may have a better idea of his side's capabilities after this success. Villa had been dissected at Liverpool a fortnight previously, then thumped at Chelsea in the League Cup. Deflating Everton suggests they may be one of the best of the rest outside that elite group.

"Liverpool and Chelsea are top quality European teams," added the manager, "and we have got a long way to go still."

As do Everton. A season that began so promisingly is threatening to unravel with only seven points taken, including one win, from their last eight matches.

Cahill will undergo a scan on a knee injury, sustained when Lee Carsley inadvertently crunched into him. David Moyes will fret all the more over the prognosis for his goalscoring midfielder given that Johnson is currently labouring. He volleyed wide from 10 yards in stoppage time before the interval. Carsley, too missed from point-blank range but this was a horribly flat display to leave the hosts dejected and O'Neill, and Villa, delighted.