Kasabian’s version of The Sweet Escape was played on the sound system before kick-off but, long before the end, Sunderland fans had resorted to a rather more familiar refrain.

As the ground echoed to chants of “You’re not fit to wear the shirt” Chris Coleman’s side stayed firmly rooted to the bottom of the Championship. They were beaten easily by an upwardly mobile Aston Villa who, inspired by Robert Snodgrass’s creative class, remain third.

“Can we still win the league?” pondered Steve Bruce, whose side have won nine of their last 11 league games and are four points behind second-placed Cardiff and seven in arrears of the leaders, Wolves, who visit Villa Park on Saturday. “Anything’s possible. We’ve given ourselves a chance.”

Sunderland’s plight meant that Bruce received a respectful welcome on his latest return to the club where, amid considerable rancour, he was sacked in November 2011. If that partly reflected an awareness that the Villa manager has recently lost his father and that his mother is seriously ill, it was also about perspective.

Viewed from the current nadir, Bruce’s achievement in lifting the Wearsiders to 10th in the top flight does not look too shabby.

Lewis Grabban received a rather more hostile reception. The Bournemouth loanee scored 12 goals in 20 games for Sunderland during the first half of the season but left to be redeployed to Villa in January. Playing off Scott Hogan in Bruce’s 4-4-2 formation, Grabban was greeted with loud boos every time he touched the ball and, initially at least, struggled to unhinge Coleman’s back five.

If Snodgrass’s left foot and clever movement always looked capable of raising the tone, a low-key opening half-hour left both keepers with next to nothing to do. That all changed when Lamine Koné carelessly conceded possession, permitting Albert Adomah to cross from the left. With John O’Shea missing a chance to clear, the ball was allowed to bounce in the six-yard area, leaving Billy Jones and Jason Steele – who did not know whether he should come for the cross – looking horribly confused.

Capitalising on this chaos, Grabban registered his third goal in three games with a close-range header. “Lewis is a better player than I thought he was,” said Bruce. “He’s very good.”

The boos intensified but proved less than cathartic for the Sunderland fans, who had earlier watched appalled as Ashley Fletcher met Donald Love’s long punt and found himself clean through on goal. Somehow Fletcher miscued, leaving the ball to bounce embarrassingly off his knee and trickle out for a goal-kick.

Coleman’s players refused to surrender but their foothold in the game loosened in first-half stoppage time when James Chester beat Koné to Snodgrass’s corner and headed past Steele.

At half-time Coleman switched to 4-4-2 and introduced the young striker Joel Asoro. It did little to diminish rising home frustration, encapsulated by Bryan Oviedo’s booking for an unpleasant foul on Snodgrass, but Sunderland did at least finally test Sam Johnstone’s reflexes. The goalkeeper did well to divert Callum McManaman’s left-foot shot for a corner before Villa quickly scored their third when Conor Hourihane’s cross was deflected beyond Steele by Oviedo.

“It’s hard to take,” said Coleman, askance at his players’ powers of defensive self-destruction. “Villa are a good, strong team but we gifted them those goals. We struggle so badly at home and it’s been a very bad night for us. It’s brutal at the moment. I feel the negativity but I made my choice to come here and, while there’s still a chance of surviving, I’ll keep fighting.”

Bruce sympathises. “Sunderland needs a new direction, a change, it needs to be taken over,” said Villa’s manager, who is not a fan of his old club’s owner, Ellis Short. “If you don’t do things properly, you end up in a mess no matter how big the stadium is. This has been coming for a few years. If Chris can’t keep them up, nobody can.”