Dean Smith (soccer player)

Dean Smith
Dean Smith (2011)
Personnel
Surname	Dean Smith
birthday	March 19, 1971
place of birth	West Bromwich ,  England
position	Central defender
Juniors
Years	station
	Newcastle United
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1989-1994	Walsall FC	142 0(2)
1994-1997	Hereford United	117 (19)
1997-2003	Leyton Orient	239 (32)
2003-2004	Sheffield Wednesday	55 0(1)
2004-2005	Port Vale	13 0(0)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
2011-2015	Walsall FC
2015-2018	Brentford FC
2018–	Aston Villa
1 Only league games are given.

Dean Smith (born March 19, 1971 in West Bromwich ) is an English football coach and former player. The former central defender spent his active career in the lower English professional leagues. After switching to coaching, he first celebrated his first notable successes at FC Walsall before moving up to the Premier League with Aston Villa .

Player career

Smith grew up in Great Barr, near Birmingham , but although he played football in the local area, his talent was discovered by Newcastle United . In Newcastle he signed his first student contract at the age of 15, but the leap into the senior sector was denied to him there and after his release he returned to his home region. There he had little luck at various trial training units and after graduating from school he worked for a powder paint company before he found his luck at FC Walsall . Smith had initially seen himself more as a midfielder, but in Walsall he was tried in the defense center.

In the 1988/89 season Smith played his first fifteen league games at Walsall FC. The club had just been promoted to the second division, but could not assert itself there and was relegated from bottom of the table. Times were turbulent and in the following year Walsall faced immense financial problems. The result was the second relegation in a row, again at the bottom of the league, with Smith only five times under the then coach John Barnwell . Even with the new trainer Kenny Hibbitt , the sporting trend could not be reversed at first; only after two years in the lower half of the table in the fourth division brought the 1992/93 season with Smith as a regular player a positive development. Together Walsall's men moved into the playoff games for promotion, but were already defeated in the semi-finals Crewe Alexandra . After another year in midfield, Smith moved to league rivals Hereford United after a total of 166 competitive games .

The transfer fee of 80,000 pounds marked a new club record for Hereford. In the team under first John Layton and the following year Graham Turner he was the undisputed regular player in the defense center and as captain Smith led Hereford in the 1995/96 season in the playoffs, which in turn for him in the semifinals (now after the defeat against Darlington FC ) ended - Smith scored the first goal in the first leg. His engagement ended the following year with another disappointment when Hereford was relegated to fifth division as bottom of the table . Although his club had a better goal difference against Brighton & Hove Albion with the same number of points , Hereford's fewer goals were decisive.

Smith moved to London in August 1997 to join Leyton Orient , another English fourth division club, who paid the fixed transfer fee of £ 42,500 for him. For the new club Smith completed 51 competitive games in the 1997/98 season and only one point would have been missing from reaching the playoff games if "Orient" had not been deducted three points. The following year, the club achieved this goal with the now promoted to captain Smith. In the semi-final win against Rotherham United , he scored on the final penalty shootout, but in the final Smith's team lost 1-0 to Scunthorpe United at Wembley . After a mixed season 1999/2000 in the lower half of the table, Smith moved a third time in a fourth division playoff round. In the final he drew 4-2 against FC Blackpool once again despite being in the lead twice. In the last year and a half Orient disappeared in midfield of the league and in February 2003 Smith took the chance to move to a second division side, with Sheffield Wednesday there was in relegation battle.

Smith could no longer ensure relegation in the remaining games of the 2002/03 season and the "Owls" had a hard time with the new captain Smith in the third division . The club was able to save itself just by a third point from the first relegated Grimsby Town and Sheffield Wednesday used the summer of 2004 to reposition itself to a large extent. Smith was one of the 13 exempted players from the club.

He moved to third division Port Vale in July 2004 , before ending his active career in January 2005 to be a youth coach at his ex-club Leyton Orient.

Coaching career

Leyton Orient

At the end of the 2004/05 season, Smith was promoted to Kotrainer alongside Martin Ling . In the following three and a half years, the duo remained active in the club. Smith earned his UEFA coaching license in 2008 (alongside “classmates” like Roy Keane , Brendan Rodgers and Ian McParland ) and Leyton Orient's liaison ended in January 2009 after the side got into sporting turmoil.

Walsall FC

Smith returned to his first professional station, Walsall, in July 2009 to command youth work. At the beginning of January 2011 he was then promoted to the interim successor to the dismissed Chris Hutchings and appointed seventeen days later to the "permanent solution" until the end of the season. Under his direction, the team gradually improved from the bottom of the table and nine points behind a first respectable win in the 6-1 win against Bristol Rovers at the end of January, until they left the relegation positions for the first time on March 1 after a 1-0 against the promoted FC Southampton . In the end, relegation could be secured with just one point. In the summer of 2011, Smith let go of fourteen players and the new team improved a little after a brilliant start and intermittent disillusionment, although only 19th place in the table jumped out due to numerous draws in the end .

In the following three years Smith built up a young team that experts and fans attested to an attractive style of play and which was mostly in the secured midfield. In January 2013 Smith was named "Third Division Coach of the Month" after reversing the interim case to the relegation ranks in December with four wins from five games. The 2012/13 season ended in ninth place and in the subsequent season, the "red-haired Mourinho ", as Smith was jokingly called, briefly led the club towards promotion ranks . The good run could not be preserved, but in July 2015 Smith moved into the final of the Football League Trophy with Walsall , which was lost 2-0 to Bristol City . In August 2015, Smith won again the election for coach of the month and the offers from competing clubs increased. The offer from Rotherham United was initially rejected, but although Smith signed another contract in Walsall for another year that same month, he moved to second division club Brentford six weeks later , with Walsall in fourth place at the time of his departure.

Brentford FC

Smith achieved a remarkable result with ninth place at the end of the 2015/16 season and for the subsequent 2016/17 season he built 18 new players into his squad, including two ex-players from Walsall. The previous year's result was almost confirmed with tenth place and for the 2017/18 season the goal of playoff games was given to promotion to the Premier League. This missed Smith with another midfield position, but he was recognized as Brentford were seen as the entertainers with an attractive passing game who achieved all of this on a frugal budget.

Aston Villa

In October 2018, he was signed by Aston Villa , which at that time was also in the second division and was in fourteenth place and provided him with former England international John Terry as an assistant. The game was immediately realigned to the offensive, but the sporting development continued to stall at first, especially since top performer and leader Jack Grealish had been injured for a long time. When he finally returned and Smith promoted him to captain in March 2019, the club set for a record streak of ten wins and the playoff games made it into the English elite class.

Awards

• England Coach of the Month (3): January 2013 (3rd division), August 2015 (3rd division), March 2019 (2nd division)

Web links

• Dean Smith in the database of weltfussball.de
• Dean Smith (player profile) in the soccerbase.com database
• Dean Smith (coach profile) in the soccerbase.com database

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Hereford Hero # 21 - Dean Smith (Talking Bull)
2. ↑ 25 years at Bescot: The stadium that changed Walsall's fortunes (Express & Star)
3. ↑ Owls boss wields the ax (BBC Sport)
4. ↑ Dean Smith player profile (OneValeFan)
5. ↑ Management duo sign O's contracts (BBC Sport)
6. ↑ Leyton Orient manager Ling leaves (BBC Sport)
7. ↑ Dean Smith gets Walsall job until end of season (BBC Sport)
8. ↑ 'Disappointed and shocked': Fans react as Dean Smith leaves Walsall FC (Express & Star)
9. ↑ Dean Smith: Brentford need more players to break into the top six next season (BBC Sport)
10. ↑ If Darren Moore is overlooked - West Brom's next manager should be this man (Birmingham Mail)
11. ↑ Dean Smith appointed Aston Villa manager with John Terry as assistant (The Guardian)