Matt Maher: Aston Villa boss Dean Smith has a history of upsetting steep odds

Sunday’s trip to champions Liverpool is the first of six matches in 22 days which will ultimately determine whether Villa are playing in the Premier League or Championship next season.

After a run of just one win in 11 matches – and none since the season’s restart – the smart money would currently appear to be on the latter.

Yet while the mood among supporters has become increasingly fraught, inside the club they are staying calm and keeping faith with Smith, the man who lead them to promotion last year.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t an acceptance things haven’t exactly gone to plan. The end of the season will be followed by a thorough review of Villa’s operations, the bulk of which is expected to focus on recruitment and scouting.

Any discussion about the club’s failings this season inevitably comes back to that subject and in particular the £140million outlay on players over the last two transfer windows.

Smith is not entirely immune from criticism on that front, having given the green light to every acquisition. The head coach was also, together with chief executive Christian Purslow and sporting director Jesus Garcia Pitarch, part of the “triangle of power” responsible for developing Villa’s transfer strategy.

It was Pitarch, however, who was responsible for sourcing the majority of the 15 players signed including the likes of record buy Wesley, midfield duo Douglas Luiz and Marvelous Nakamba, left-back Matt Targett and winger Trezeguet.

All have struggled for consistency and form during what was, for most, their first season in the Premier League and for many English football.

Luiz, a £15million purchase from Manchester City, has at least shown a marked improvement since the season’s lockdown. The Brazilian aside, the only other signings worth as much or more than Villa paid for them are Tyrone Mings and Tom Heaton, both of whom were sourced by Smith (Mings having played a key part in the club’s promotion while on loan) with Purslow stepping in to ensure the deals got over the line.

At the age of 33 when he joined, Heaton was comfortably the oldest acquisition and while the total spend has drawn inevitable comparisons with Fulham’s mad trolley dash of 12 months previously, the truth is Villa were probably not pragmatic enough.

Instead they stuck too rigidly to a plan of buying players with potential when one or two older heads, even on loan, might have made a significant difference.

The lack of prior Premier League knowledge has not only been confined to the playing squad and there is a growing belief Villa missed a trick by not appointing an experienced top flight coach to Smith’s backroom team.

Bearing in mind the lack of production from some signings, it is also possible to argue Villa did too much business. The presence of just 11 players on the books following promotion made a rebuild inevitable but there could still perhaps have been a greater emphasis on quality over quantity. For all the incomings, Villa’s squad still lacks depth. Not pursuing deals for Leeds midfielder Kalvin Phillips and Brentford winger Said Benrahma, two players Smith was particularly keen on, looks an error in hindsight.

All these questions will be debated extensively once the season is complete, yet for now they can wait because Villa’s fate is still some way from being sealed and there remains a belief, at least inside the club, they can still escape danger.

It is partly fuelled by the failings of their rivals. By Sunday night, after Watford’s defeat to Southampton, the bottom five had picked up just three points combined since the league’s resumption and two of those were Villa’s.

Comparison could be drawn to a year ago when the failure of Bristol City and Derby among others to win matches in hand gave Smith’s Villa hope prior to the record-breaking 10-match winning run which catapulted them into the play-offs and promotion.

No-one is suggesting they are about to repeat that feat and Villa cannot count on those around them to keep losing. Yet neither does it feel as though they will be cut completely adrift even after they have negotiated a daunting double-header against the champions and Manchester United.

For Smith the focus is on adding a cutting edge while retaining the improved defensive discipline evident since the restart. The head coach’s calm and measured demeanour in the face of mounting pressure contrasts sharply with an increasingly agitated fanbase, though it comes as little surprise to those who have followed his development since first taking charge of Walsall nearly a decade ago.

Though the stakes were not so high, Smith has experience of digging his way out of a hole and upsetting the odds, overturning a nine-point deficit to achieve safety with the Saddlers in 2011.

So too do Villa. After all, this is a club who just two years ago somehow escaped administration by the finest of margins and then last year won promotion from a position which at one point appeared impossible.

Difficult though making the case for them now avoiding the drop might be, recent history warns against writing off Villa or Smith too hastily.