Analysis: Play-off final win over Derby completes a surreal few months for Aston Villa

Referee Paul Tierney gave one final shrill blast of his whistle to send Derby’s players slumping to their knees and Villa hurtling into an exciting new dawn.

Dean Smith, John Terry, Jack Grealish, John McGinn, Prince William and 38,000 travelling supporters all became lost in a moment of sheer ecstasy but also near bewilderment.

How on earth did Villa get here, back to the Premier League? How did a team whose promotion hopes looked dead and buried only three months ago pull off the most exhilarating of Houdini acts?

Go back a little further, to the dark days of last July, and the story gets even more extraordinary.

Villa, let’s not forget, were mere hours from entering administration on at least two occasions and starting the season on minus-12 points, before the arrival of two billionaires in the shape of Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens pulled them out of the mire.

Former owner Tony Xia, still a minority stakeholder, was also at Wembley on Monday, wearing a very different expression to the one a year ago when defeat to Fulham and his failed gamble left Villa standing on the precipice.

Xia wisely stayed away from the on-pitch post-match celebrations. For this was not his moment.

Instead the heroes of the piece could be seen scattered all over one half of the Wembley pitch in the minutes after the final whistle.

Anwar El Ghazi and McGinn might have got the goals and the latter deservedly claimed the man-of-the-match prize.

Grealish might have got the headlines after skippering his boyhood club back to the big time.

Smith, meanwhile, deserves most of the credit after orchestrating the whole thing.

But above everything else, Villa’s success has been a team effort and there were not many involved in the celebrations who did not, at some point along the way, play their part.

The supreme collective effort again summed up in the closing stages of the season’s most important game.

With Tyrone Mings injured moments before Martyn Waghorn got the Rams back into the game, Kortney Hause found himself flung into action for the first time in the play-offs and only the second time since early April.

The Wolves loanee promptly responded to the challenge by winning a succession of aerial challenges to ensure the game would have no final gut-wrenching twist. He will now surely find himself a permanent fixture of Smith’s squad next season.

This being Villa, they were never going to do it the easy way.

There was a brief time, after McGinn had doubled their lead, when it looked like they might, only for Waghorn to set up a nerve-shredding finish and ensure those fans in decked in claret and blue would have their emotions put through the wringer one last time.

But having taken control of the game thanks to their greater bravery and willingness to get on the front foot, Villa saw it out thanks to the rock-hard mentality which has seen them meet every challenge head on.

The team which always finds a way to win did it again when the stakes were at their highest.

Defeat would have been a hammer blow, no question about it. For all the brilliant progress made by Smith since arriving at the club last October, promotion was needed to continue the momentum.

An element of rebuilding was inevitable, whatever the result, yet with FFP concerns now erased, Villa will get to call most of their own shots.

Striking a permanent deal for Tyrone Mings is a no-brainer, as is one for El Ghazi, who was excellent here. Tammy Abraham, another star performer in the final, is also on the target list.

You could spend hours, days even, analysing and looking for the answers to precisely what happened over the last three months.

It is nothing less than a sporting fairytale, one of those rare moments when all the right ingredients came together at the right time, at a club where the mixture for the past decade has often been wrong and usually toxic.

The hard work is in many respects just beginning. Next season will undoubtedly be tough. The step up in level is considerable and Villa must first remember how to walk before they can run in the Premier League again.

But the manner in which they claimed promotion means this is a club once again dreaming big.

“This feels right,” said Smith afterwards. He’s not wrong.