Smith draws on last-day success to steel Villa for survival ordeal

Aston Villa are facing an excruciating Survival Sunday, but at least Dean Smith has been here before.

Nerve-shredding final days have been the norm for Smith during his career in the dugout and Villa’s head coach has insisted he is relishing the pressure as the relegation battle goes to the wire.

Villa have given themselves a huge opportunity to avoid the drop after Tuesday’s 1-0 victory over Arsenal lifted them out of the bottom three and above Watford on goal difference.

They face West Ham tomorrow needing to match Watford’s result against Arsenal, and Smith is now unquestionably in pole position to maintain his record of never being relegated as a manager.

“I enjoy pressure, I must admit. It sounds absurd but I don’t mind it,” he said. “I think 33 years of being involved in football is enough to help you deal with pressures that are there. It certainly wouldn’t be good for my health if I was getting too up and down.

“If I’m up and down then I can’t expect the players to have good emotional control as well, so I think it’s really important I’ve trained myself to do that. I was told when you go into management you won’t sleep much, but I sleep very well and, fortunately, I sleep better than my wife, who seems to be the one who bears the brunt of the pressure and stress levels.”

Smith’s past experiences ensure he will be Villa’s biggest asset at the London Stadium. In 2006, he was assistant manager at Leyton Orient when they won away at Oxford deep into added time to earn promotion to League One. Five years later, in his first job as a No1, Walsall survived on the final day by one point despite defeat at Southampton. And then last year there was the Championship play-off final, when Villa secured promotion with victory over Derby County at Wembley.

He said: “My biggest drive in football is always to prove people wrong. When you walk into any club – and for me it’s been Walsall, Brentford and Aston Villa – you won’t have 100 per cent of the supporters and everybody to do with the club wishing you well.

“My job has always been to prove the doubters wrong and hopefully to use that as a driving force. That’s always done me well and I feel it’s done the players well too.”

Villa moved out of the relegation zone for the first time since late February with the win over Arsenal, and the momentum does appear to be with them. Yet there is still the possibility of a late twist, as was underlined by the madcap final day of the Championship season this week.

Smith said: “There’s every possibility it could be another dramatic day because, over the course of 90 minutes of football, anything can happen. There can be goals scored, goals conceded, there can be red cards. That’s why we love the game, it can be so random at times. We have to control what we can control and that’s our performance.

“If we do what we’ve done over the last month and control our performances then we’ve got a really good chance.”