Terry not leaving Aston Villa for Bristol City, says Smith

Aston Villa manager Dean Smith has dismissed talk of his assistant John Terry leaving to take charge of Bristol City.

The former Chelsea centre-back has been touted as one of the top candidates to fill the vacant role at the Championship club.

Bristol sacked Lee Johnson this week after they went nine games without a win and they now sit three points adrift of the last playoff spot.

But Villa coach Smith says there is no chance Terry will abandon the Premier League side amid their fight for survival and doubts the ex-England star will be on the move this summer, either.

"I have spoken to John and he is fully committed to our cause here at Aston Villa,” he told Sky Sports.

"I don't think we can look at the summer, we've got to look at now.

"They've got Dean Holden, a former coach of mine, in charge at the moment. He is working hard for his club and JT is certainly working very hard for me.

"We've got a very good relationship and we enjoy working together."

Villa are second bottom of the English top-flight and seven points from safety with four games left to play.

Smith’s team have collected just two points from their last 10 Premier League matches but he is confident they can pick up points before the campaign comes to an end.

"We've got four massive games to come and they're not against Man Utd or Liverpool, they're against teams we feel we can be competitive against but there is an awful lot of quality in the Premier League,” he added.

"Our concentration now is fully on Crystal Palace. They won their first game after lockdown at Bournemouth 2-0 but they've lost their last four.

"I watched their last game against Chelsea and they were very good, they were very unfortunate they didn't get a result in that game.

"We have to just make sure we concentrate on ourselves and that we are performing to the levels we can.

"Now we face a team in Crystal Palace we feel we can be competitive against rather than the internationals at Liverpool and Manchester United.”