Aston Villa Head Coach Dean Smith believes mentality will be crucial during what he describes as a “mini-tournament” over the final 10 matches of the Premier League season.
Speaking to VillaTV, Smith has provided an update on preparations with just days to go until the 2019/20 top-flight campaign resumes with the club’s home clash against Sheffield United on Wednesday (ko 6pm).
The Villa boss covered a wide range of topics including the hard work put in during lockdown, lessons learned from earlier this season, the impact of playing behind closed doors, the return of John McGinn, what he’s expecting from the Blades and much more.
Smith said: “We’ve spoken about the teams we’re playing, we’ve spoken about form, and there is no form, we’re going in to this with everybody on an even keel now.
“Conditioning-wise, I’m really pleased with where the players are.
“And the mental side of it, we’ve done a lot of work during lockdown on that but also now we’ve just been giving little video messages going into the practice games that we’ve had.
“Mentality is going to be the most important thing when you go into these games, especially with no supporters there.
“It’s going to be that inner driving force that pushes people on at times.
“Where normally you would have the adrenaline from the noise and the crowd, it’s one of those where you’ve got to drive yourself.
“The players have been doing a lot of work on what drives them, what’s that innerness and the team spirit that’s going to get us going.
“They’ve worked very hard on it and it’s something we’re quite positive about now.”
The Villa boss feels the remainder of the season can be likened to a World Cup camp, with the demands of 10 games in a such space of time similar to tournament football.
Villa face four matches in the first 11 days and Smith is confident his side can reap the benefits of the work put in during lockdown and get the results required to climb the table.
“It (the break in fixtures) gave us an opportunity to stop, reset, reflect and review a little bit on what we’d done before,” he added.
“We’ve certainly learnt an awful lot of lessons, but the proof of the pudding is putting those lessons into practice now in the remaining games.
“I’m very confident we can go and do that.
“The players are as well, the work we’ve done during lockdown and where we are now, this is a brand-new season, it’s tournament football for 10 games.
“And we’re prepared for that.”
You can watch Dean’s full interview now, without the need to log in, at VillaTV, click here.
