VILLA SHOW THEY ARE SERIOUS BY BELIEVING IN SMITH AND GREALISH
CONSIDERING the ruthless, or knee-jerk, nature of Premier League ownership, Dean Smith can consider himself fortunate to be taking charge of Aston Villa’s opening fixture of the season tomorrow.
He kept the club in the top flight, but when £144.5million was shelled out on new signings in the summer of 2019, the owners were surely not envisaging a relegation battle going to the wire.
And Villa were the first team to survive with fewer than 36 points since West Ham stayed up in
2010.
Con s o li d at ing a position in the Premier League was clearly the club’s priority but expectations were, no doubt, in excess of 35 points.
Only one team, Norwich City, conceded more than the 67 goals shipped by Villa.
Smith had many on-the-field difficulties to deal with and also suffered the tragedy of losing his father to the coronavirus.
The manner in which he bore his grief was a measure of the man’s dignity and decency.
It typifies the way he manages a football club, in particular his beloved Villa.
But Smith was not spared the sack out of sentiment or out of emotion – that simply does not happen in top-flight football.
The owners must have recognised a manager whose commitment and attachment counts for an awful lot.
And credit to them for not only sticking with Smith but for again showing ambition in the transfer window, with £ 84m spent on Ollie Watkins, Emiliano Martinez, Matty Cash and Bertrand Traore, with the possibility of more to come. That is around £230m in two summer windows with barely a penny of income from sales.
And, of course, on top of that, a lucrative new five- year contract for Jack Grealish. This Villa ownership is serious.
Granted, Smith admitted there were no official bids for his captain, but a sale could, most likely, have been engineered.
We all know that official bids are few and far between. Generally, they are only made when potential buyers are convinced their target is gettable.
The vibes received by agents sniffing around Grealish would have been that the player himself was not sure he needed to leave and the club certainly did not want him to leave.
Instead, it is clear Villa want Grealish (left, with Smith) to be the talisman of another prosperous era on the pitch.
Frankly, such were the problems last season, and even the signings of Watkins, Martinez, Cash and Traore might not be sufficient to stave off more struggle.
For what it is worth, I see another scrap at the bottom end of the table. But I hope I am badly wrong.
For their support of Smith – morally and financially – and for managing to keep Grealish in the ranks, it would be hard to begrudge Villa a decent season.
Tomorrow, Smith’s men start their Premier League endeavours against Chris Wilder’s Sheffield United – the fan-managers’ derby.
And in this era when Europe’s elite coaches swap big roles as if in some sort of pass- themanagerial-parcel game, they both deserve the best of luck.