As an Aston Villa supporter of a certain age but no older, I was lucky enough to experience some things as a kid that almost nobody younger than me will have experienced too.
I stood on the Holte End when that was what it was there for, only realising later on how little it mattered that I couldn’t see much. I saw Villa win twice at Wembley, lifting the Coca-Cola Cup twice in three seasons and setting me up for three decades of wondering what if.
That’s why the team that won promotion to the Premier League from the Championship in 2018/19 means so much to me. Glories have been few and far between and for every FA Cup semi-final win over Liverpool there was an FA Cup final against Arsenal.
Watching Dean Smith’s Villa win the play-off final – ten wins in a row, captained and managed by Villa supporters and all that – was special.
At full time at Wembley I was speechless. When Jack Grealish hoisted aloft the trophy, nicking his eyebrow in the process, I expelled a noise I hadn’t heard before and haven’t heard since.
Villa’s goalkeeper that day was Jed Steer, so captivated by the place that he promised himself he’d play at Wembley again. He did it twice. He won both times.
“I look back at that team all the time,” Steer tells me. “And I wonder how we didn’t win the Championship with those players. But that’s football.”
It’s a fair question.
“We had Tammy Abraham up front and you go through the spine and you’ve got Tyrone Mings, John McGinn, Jack Grealish. Even the full-backs. Ahmed Elmohamady and Neil Taylor are vastly experienced internationals.
“When I came back from my loan at Charlton Athletic, I remember training the next day and thinking, ‘This is another level completely.’”
Steer was brought to Villa in 2013 by Paul Lambert, his manager at Norwich City. He stayed for ten years, battling injuries and playing for five different clubs on loan but ultimately leaving as a beloved face of one of Villa’s most important achievements.
Smith was the architect and Steer doesn’t shy away from his admiration and affection for the former Villa boss.
“He’s been my favourite manager by a country mile,” he says.
“He’s a fantastic coach. He just loves coaching and developing players. I loved his tactics and the way he put those across to everyone, but more so the actual person and the manager he is.
“With football, it’s so up and down it’s crazy. You win one game and you’re like Barcelona. You lose the next and you’re horrendous, the worst team ever, you should all be dropped.
“As players, we feed off the manager. On a Monday morning you can gauge how the manager feels and if he’s down and angry because you’ve lost at the weekend, that rubs off on everyone.
“But Dean was the same person whether you win, lose or draw. Coming to work every day was enjoyable because of that and the team he had around him were all great.”
Smith’s level-headed approach – don’t get too high and don’t get too low irrespective of results – was a mantra the manager returned to in public time and again. It’s easy to see how players were reassured by it.
Villa’s promotion team was a beautiful, brilliant patchwork, masterfully stitched together for the job at hand. Championship buys and transfer market gambles were pivotal. Key players were on season-long loans.
Now promoted, Smith and Villa had to tool up for the Premier League.
“I knew they were going to bring a goalkeeper in but that they saw me as a second choice,” Steer recalls.
“They gave me a four-year contract. With my previous injuries, I couldn’t really turn down four years of playing for the club. And we were on a high, and I loved it, I loved working with the gaffer and his staff.
“You see and you hear that they’re linked with other goalkeepers. We knew that Neil Cutler was going and meeting goalkeepers. It’s never nice because we wanted to play, obviously, but they signed Tom Heaton.
“If they were going to go and sign someone, I couldn’t have asked for anyone better. Heats is a top, top guy and the ultimate professional, and I loved working with him. I learned loads from him.”
Steer had good times and tough times in his subsequent days out on loan, during which he matured into a solid professional with a keen understanding of what really matters in life.
This summer, he made the decision to leave Peterborough United and focus on his young and growing family. He doesn’t know where he’ll go next but when the choice is made, it’ll be made on the basis of what’s right for the people around him.
“I had a great time at Peterborough,” says Steer.
“I really appreciated that they took a punt on me. I was out injured for a long, long time. It was a really tough couple of years but I got back, trained at Luton Town for about three or four months, and Barry Fry called Mick Harford and thankfully Mick put a good word in.
“Barry signed me for a month as cover. I went in and I had nothing to lose. I was buzzing, I’d got a club, I’d come back from injury. I trained really well that first week and the gaffer just chucked me straight in.
“I signed a two-year contract. At my age, you don’t really get that in League One and League Two. We had a tough year last season. Bags of potential but it was a young side.
“In January they were quite happy for me to move on. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to get back in the team and I thought I still had a chance, so I stayed. I went straight back into the team, we went on a brilliant run, stayed up, and ended up winning the EFL Trophy back to back at Wembley.
“It was during that run that I felt as if I was commuting a long way every day, my family was settled, and I just didn’t want to let anyone down. So I had to make a decision as to whether I thought I could do another year with the commuting and life at home changing.”
At 32, he is building the foundations of his future. He doesn’t see himself as a manager but coaching appeals and Steer is passionate about player development.
His regard for Cutler and the goalkeeping coaches he’s worked with elsewhere reveals Steer as a student of his craft. Football supporters and analysts are notoriously bad at assessing goalkeepers.
Curious, I ask Steer what actually makes Emiliano Martínez a good one.
“His desire is crazy,” says Steer. “The day he walked into Villa, I remember him saying we’d get into the Champions League. I think most people laughed at him to be honest.
“He just drags people along with him, with his belief and enthusiasm and desire. He loves stats. He loves clean sheet numbers. And because of that, he just says things and he goes and achieves them.
“Working with Emi, he makes things look easy. You don’t realise actually how good some of the things he does are.
“He worked day in, day out. Long days with [Cutler] on analysis, in the gym, on the pitch, everything. He had that aim of being the best goalkeeper in the world and he got there. He’s certainly one of the best.”
For now, Steer’s keen comprehension of the game is emphatically demonstrated on BBC Radio Norfolk and VillaTV, where his ability to combine goalkeeping insight with the overall tactical smarts gleaned from his past managers. Not all goalkeepers can analyse and communicate the wider game in real-time to such a high standard.
He clearly loves working as a co-commentator and Villa couldn’t ask for a better representative.
Steer knows the game and speaks about it well. He reflects on his years at Villa, a time of ups and downs shared with players to whom he remains close, with great pride.
It’s great that he’s part of ours.
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