Aston Villa legend Allan Evans hopes new manager Paul Lambert can sign Norwich City striker Grant Holt.

The European Cup winner also insists Darren Bent must be kept on.

"Paul Lambert is a fantastic appointment and a young guy who has lots of his own ideas about what needs to be done," Evans told the Daily Star Sunday.

"But he has a hell of a job on his hands because if you look at Villa's squad, there's not enough top quality players there. They're no better than Norwich. But expectancy levels at the club are much higher.

"It's not easy for me to say that as I love the club and would walk there tomorrow (from Plymouth) to help out with the coaching. But we need quality players. If he signed Holt that would be a very good acquisition because he scores goals.

"You need three top strikers to be competitive. We saw Villa struggle to score last season when Bent got injured. Lambert knows Holt and managers like to sign players they know they can trust and that would be the case there.

"Gabby Agbonlahor is a bit too hit and miss in front of goal.

"If Bent left for £20m, you'd have to spend that much to replace him with another goalscorer, so why bother?

"I would rather they overhauled the whole club, staff, players, everything. Paul will need to be given the time to do that as Villa won't become top six in one year.