Dean Smith: League resumption will feel like a new season for Aston Villa

Speaking for the first time since sport was suspended last month, Smith explained how he and his coaching staff had used the time away to “review and reset” the club’s first campaign back in the top flight.

With Bodymoor Heath closed, the boss has conducted hour-long video reviews with every member of the first-team squad, the majority of whom were new to the Premier League this term.

Villa, who embarked on a much-publicised £127million spending spree last summer, sat 19th in the table when the campaign was halted. Their final match was a disastrous 4-0 defeat at Leicester, their fourth league defeat on the spin.

Smith believes the unexpected break can help rebuild confidence and though there remains huge uncertainty over how - or even if - the season will resume, he wants to ensure his players are in the best shape possible, both physically and mentally.

He said: “Our last game seems a long time ago but it was a big defeat and there is time to repair confidence.

“When this season starts again it will almost feel like a second season in the Premier League for us, albeit for just the 10 games we have left, because there will have been such a gap.

“We have made mistakes and shown an awful lot of inconsistency in our first season back in the top flight.

“This has given us the opportunity to make sure we are ready for these last 10 games.”

Smith continued: “There was a lot of change at the club last summer. You look back and think in hindsight would we have done anything different? We would probably have wanted a lot more experience with the Premier League but at that time we couldn’t get it.

“It was either too expensive or unobtainable. We did the business we did and after the novelty wore off, the players have found out what the Premier League is all about.

“The break allows us to reset and know the standards, physically and tactically, we have to get to when we start back.”

Premier League clubs will hold a teleconference today to discuss various proposals for how best to complete the season. No resumption looks likely until June at the earliest.

Smith said: “We are looking to plan the future but nobody knows what the future holds at the moment.

“We don’t know how long the virus is going to be here for. We don’t know when we are going to hit the peak.

“All we are being led by is the government. We want to get back to playing football but it seems a long way away at the moment.”