Dean Smith rooting for happier outcome as Walsall head back to Wembley

On Monday, Smith will be sat watching events at Wembley from the Charlotte FC training ground, hoping Mat Sadler and the class of 2025 can experience a different outcome.

“It was a great occasion. I can still remember it vividly. I was still ginger back then!” smiles Smith, while recalling the 2015 Johnstone’s Paint Trophy final.

“It was just disappointing how things went on the day. We never really played as well as we could.”

Smith is quick to point out the circumstances facing the Saddlers this time around are very different.

Back in 2015, they were big underdogs against a Bristol City team which would go on to win the League One title with nearly 100 points. Smith recalls a post-match conversation with then Saddlers owner Jeff Bonser which helped lift his spirits after the 2-0 defeat.

“I was gutted and it was the chairman who came over and pointed out their squad was 10 times our budget,” he says. “It made me feel a bit better.”Monday’s match with AFC Wimbledon is far more evenly matched and in the context of a season where the Saddlers appeared to be cruising to the title before a dramatic collapse, feels impossible to call.

In terms of what is at stake compared to 10 years ago, there really is no comparison.

“It’s totally different,” says Smith. “Everything is on the line, really. The whole season. At one time it looked like they were guaranteed to get promoted and then they have picked themselves back up from being what, a few seconds away from going up?

“They did well in the first two legs of the play-offs. They will be going there knowing they have got a good chance.”

Smith, of course, knows precisely what it takes to win a play-off final having triumphed with Villa on his second trip to Wembley as a manager in 2019.

“One of the good things about a play-off final is you can concentrate fully on the actual game,” he says.

“I remember in 2015 we won the semi-final against Preston and then had 11 league matches to play before the final.

“It was ridiculous. You couldn’t really focus on Wembley until a few days before. I think the fact it is such a short run-in should help.”

While Smith left Bescot for Brentford eight months after Wembley, he has always maintained close ties with a club where he also began his playing career. 

His brother Dave and daughter Katie are both going to Monday’s game. They also attended Sunday’s League One play-off final where another of his former clubs, Leyton Orient, are aiming for promotion. Martin Ling, who he also spent four years as assistant to at the O’s, is sporting director.

“I’m hoping for a Wembley double,” said Smith.  

He speaks regularly to Walsall boss Sadler, who played for the club in his first full season as boss in 2011-12 and has regularly described Smith as a “mentor”. Richard O’Kelly, his assistant in 2015 who then followed him to Brentford and Villa, is back with the Saddlers as an associate director.

“I know Mat well,” says Smith. “He is really calm, really steady and I know how gutted he was they did not go up automatically. 

“But he has re-set them really well so far in the play-offs and hopefully they can go that one step more.

“They had a player in Nathan Lowe who was having an exceptional season and he gets taken away from them in January. 

“It affects the team. At that level, that is sometimes the difference. You don’t want to be a one-man team and they are not a one-man team. 

“But it makes such a difference when there is a player performing at a really high level.”

Walsall won 1-0 away at Wimbledon in November, before drawing 1-1 at Bescot in March.

Smith believes those results should give them confidence.

“I had a real positive mindset in 2019 with Villa,” he says. “I looked at the games we had played against Derby, beating them 3-0 away and 4-0 at home. 

“I thought, we are going to a neutral venue. If we played them 100 times, we are winning 96 of them. 

“That is the message I gave to the players. The players were fairly calm going into the game and I think that is what you need. They need to be at their best going into the game.

“You have to treat it like a normal game. They just have to concentrate on their job, get their performance and if they do that, they will win the game.”