Dean Smith aiming to take next step on management journey by winning promotion with Aston Villa

Victory over Derby at Wembley on Monday would see Dean Smith realise his ambition of managing in the Premier League. The fact it would be achieved with the club he has supported since childhood would only make it all the sweeter.

Yet it is a dream which did not exist less than a decade ago, until Smith was unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight at Walsall in January 2011.

Academy boss at the Banks’s Stadium, he suddenly found himself in charge of the first-team when Chris Hutchings was sacked, with the Saddlers sat nine points adrift of safety at the bottom of League One.

“I didn’t actually want the job,” recalls Smith. “But I was the only coach left at Walsall at the time. There was no-one else.

“My first game was Tranmere away and we were 3-1 down. I remember turning to (physio) Jon Whitney and saying ‘I can see why we’re bottom of the league’.

“We scored two goals in the last five minutes to draw the game and eventually stayed up on the last day of the season. I think I had injected the drug that day (at Tranmere) of becoming a manager.

“Getting Aston Villa up would be a big achievement. But probably keeping Walsall up in my first year was a bigger achievement because we needed snookers in January.”

The reluctant caretaker has now become one of the most promising managers in the English game.

Smith would be the first to admit his development has been gradual. His desire to learn and improve, meanwhile, remains unquenchable.

The implementation of a club-wide ‘football philosophy’ at Walsall in the summer of 2012 was a key point in his evolution as a coach. So too was the arrival, one year later, of Richard O’Kelly, the man who has been by his side ever since. Gradually their methods – tried, tested and amended where necessary – have delivered success, if not yet silverware.

First at Walsall, whom they led to Wembley for the first time in club history in 2015. Then at Brentford, where three consecutive top-10 finishes put Smith in the frame to succeed Steve Bruce last October.

The clear fan favourite for the job, he arrived at Villa Park riding a wave of optimism and has proved more than up to the billing, re- energising a team which had begun to drift badly in the final weeks of Bruce’s reign.

Players speak of a coach who puts on challenging yet rewarding training sessions and who has an ability to remain cool no matter the circumstances.

The mantra of never getting too carried away by victory, or down with defeat, is one he has carried from the very start.

It has served him well through the low points, including a 16-game winless run at Walsall in 2012 which could have ended his career before it began.

It was there earlier this season, when Villa won just two out of 14 games and Smith found himself under scrutiny before the 10-match winning run which salvaged the campaign.

The mantra now echoes around the dressing room. Villa are a team who have come to mirror their head coach. Whatever the challenge, they hold their nerve.

“There’s no magic wand,” he says. “I’ve been a player and played 700 games.

“I played some good games and some bad games and I knew when I went home whether I’d played a good or bad game.

“I’ve not seen many players who don’t try. But sometimes it just doesn’t happen.

“My job is to try to get the players to believe in themselves, then to believe in each other and then to go and be a good team-mate.

“If you can do that and get them playing for each other and get a bit of togetherness, you’re on your way there.”

The fact Smith is a lifelong Villa supporter is in many respects incidental. He has proved himself more than up to the job.

Yet there can be no ignoring the close connection for the man who grew up just a good walk away from Villa Park in Great Barr.

More than 30 members of his family will be at Wembley while Smith, about as grounded as they come, has had to adapt to a lifestyle where everyone in his home city knows his name.

“I’ve tried to keep my head down,” he said. “I’ve got my family and friends who want to talk about Villa quite often and I try and keep away from it. Just play it how it is.

“I suppose I’ve found it harder going into a few of the pubs I used to go to in Birmingham.

“All in all the Villa fans have been fantastic to be honest. You do get recognised a bit more and when you fill up the car and somebody will want to ask for a photo. But that’s fine. That’s part of it.”

Smith’s story is not one without tragedy. His father, Ron, the man who did more than any other to instil a deep love for Villa, has dementia and does not know his son is now leading the club where he worked for 25 years as a steward.

Smith and his brother, Dave, would travel to games with Ron and clean the seats in the old Trinity Road Stand in exchange for a free pass into the Holte End.

There is a moment, when talking about his father, that the ice cool demeanour understandably slips. The voice of a man for whom family will always comes first begins to crack.

“I remember after the Walsall game in 2015, the final, I had to go and put my dad to bed that night,” says Smith. There is a pause, before he continues: “That is a tough thing to do for anyone. I put my family side to one side and concentrate on Aston Villa.”

Today that is precisely what Smith will do again as he looks to guide the club back to the top flight, three years on from the most shambolic of relegations.

There is plenty at stake, just as there was 12 months ago when Bruce took his team into battle with Fulham.

There isn’t, however, the same extreme pressure for a club which, back then, had banked everything on promotion.

Defeat would be painful, of course. It would probably lead to the exit of star man Jack Grealish and a summer full of difficult decisions.

No-one should be under the illusion things would be easy. But it wouldn’t lead to Villa being on the brink of administration barely a fortnight after the game, as happened a year ago.

The arrival of Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens restored stability and for the first time in a long time, Villa are building from solid foundations. Whatever today’s outcome, they have a plan for it.

A win would deliver for Smith a first promotion, a first piece of silverware and also a maiden victory at Wembley, where he tasted defeat with the Saddlers in the 2015 Checkatrade Trophy final and before then as a player, having captained Leyton Orient in their 1999 Division Three play-off final loss to Scunthorpe.

“I think I’ve had to earn it,” said Smith. “You have to as a young manager. You’ve got to work your way up.

“That’s why I take my hat off to John Terry being here, working with myself and Richard and Neil Cutler.

“It’s been refreshing and brilliant to have him working with us.

“But you have to work your way up and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it.

“There have been highs and lows but that’s what’s made me the manager I am today, learning from those experiences whether they be good or bad.

“At the moment we’re experiencing a good time and we need to make sure we finish that off by getting promoted.

“If we do, it will certainly feel like the pinnacle of my managerial career so far.”