Aston Villa journalist Dan Bardell has made a claim on the future Villa manager Dean Smith.
This comes after Bardell recently made an appearance on The Villa View to chat about the latest goings-on at the club, in which he suggested that Villa may have been planning to fire the current boss in the summer, before the club eventually prevailed in their fight from relegation on the final day of the Premier League season.
On the topic of Smith and the possibility of him being sacked this summer, Bardell shared his thoughts on the matter.
He said: “I’ve got an idea in my head of what I think has transpired and what I will say is I think Villa have potentially sounded out some other managers and maybe the plan was to replace Dean.
“The players importantly – because they are the important ones – they love Dean Smith and they want to work under Dean Smith and want him to keep the job. You can see that they all like him. Ex-players that have left the club in the last year, they all talk very highly of him.
“He has learned a lot from this first season in the Premier League having been a rookie Premier League manager for a year, and he will only become better from that experience and hopefully, he’ll be able to work with [fewer] constraints this time around, be able to do things his own way a little bit more. There’ll be a bit more trust in the manager, which is something I want to see and we’ll have a good summer, but for me, absolutely the right call that Dean Smith should be the Aston Villa manager next season because for me, he 100% deserves it.”
Smith was appointed as Villa’s head coach back in October 2018. Since then, Smith has guided the club out of the Championship and secured their place in the Premier League for next season.
Overall, Smith has taken charge of 84 matches for Villa and earned himself a points-per-game average of 1.44 (per Transfermarkt).
This season saw Villa narrowly miss being relegated back to the Championship after finishing in 17th place in the Premier League table on 35 points, having won just nine of their 38 matches.
Is Dean Smith the right man to manage Villa next season?
Yes
No
TIF Thoughts…
It’s nice to hear Bardell saying that he thinks Smith deserves to stay on as Villa manager despite them having a rather disappointing season in the top flight this year.
Having only just managed to dodge the drop back to the Championship, Smith and the rest of his management team have a lot of work to do over the summer to make sure they are not in another relegation battle next season.