Dean Smith is planning to be at Norwich City for the long haul.

Smith was keen to return swiftly to the game, in the wake of his own dismissal from Aston Villa last November, to pick up the relegation baton from Daniel Farke.

Despite a festive swing framed by illness and injury to his playing squad the former Walsall, Brentford and Villa chief has plotted a route away from listing at the bottom to being in the mix, with a realistic shot at upsetting the odds.

To pull off a great escape, and preserve his own record of never being relegated in his coaching career, Smith needs to muster more alchemy over the run in.

But such is the warmth of the welcome for him and his experienced assistant, Craig Shakespeare, he is also prepared to take a peak beyond the horizon.

“Hopefully I’m here still in five years time but that process of learning about the players and working with players will still be developing in five years time, because there is always a turnaround in football,” he said. “Players don’t normally stay around for five, six, seven years. In football, it doesn’t happen that way because you’re always looking to get better.

“You’re always looking to evolve as a football club and we also know if players are doing really well some of these top clubs will be looking at them as well. Each player should have their own target to set a goal of where they want to be, and how they want to get there.

“Our job is to help players become better players, but not just better players, better people, because if they’re better people, then they’ve got a chance of being real top players. They become selfless, they become good team mates and that’s what the top players in the top clubs are.

“I was disappointed what happened at Villa. I’ve never worried about losing my job, whether it’s Walsall, Brentford, Aston Villa or here at Norwich because I’m not in control of that. My job is to work with players to help them become better.

“If they become better, the team becomes better. If the team gets better, then you get results and that is the be all and end all for a coach.”

Smith’s track record of improving players was clearly a good fit for the Canaries’ well documented self-funded model.

“I’ve had to do it that way before at the other clubs I worked at, and that is the Norwich model. But you know, we can’t forget we spent a lot in the summer before I came in,” he said. “That is why I knew we would not be doing too much in the January period.

“Our job is to bring in players that have potential. And then our job is to help them fulfil that potential.