Alan Smith relishing prospect of reunion with his former Manchester United team-mates in FA Cup clash

Midfielder meets former Old Trafford team-mates when his Notts County side take on their Salford City in the first round. And, the 35-year-old tells Simon Hart, he knows his old muckers will be desperate to come out on top

Alan Smith says getting Notts County promoted would be his biggest achievement (Andrew Fox)

Alan Smith is discussing Class of 92: Out of Their League, the BBC documentary about Salford City, the Northern Premier League club preparing for a historic occasion in the FA Cup this evening.

When he watched the first part last week, what registered above all was the undiminished appetite for football of the club’s part-owners – the Nevilles, Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Ryan Giggs – though it hardly surprised the one-time Old Trafford forward who finds himself on the opposing side to his old colleagues with Notts County in a televised first-round tie.

“The lads who are going to be involved in the club on Friday are a credit to Man Utd,” says Smith. “They won championships year in, year out and sustained their standard for such a long period of time. You still see now the appetite that they’ve got for football.”

If Smith’s admiration is obvious, it is likely to be mutual when his former team-mates watch the long-haired 35-year-old holding things together in the Notts midfield. This is the same Smith, after all, whose career nearly ended 10 seasons ago in another FA Cup tie in front of the BBC cameras. It was in February 2006 that Smith, then a Manchester United player, suffered a broken left leg and badly dislocated ankle during a fifth-round defeat at Liverpool. A decade on, he is playing League Two football with the same passion Gary Neville – the first person on the scene to comfort him that day – invests in his Salford role. “You start playing football as a kid because you love playing and I still love it as much now,” he tells The Independent. “I have a few more aches and pains now, as you can imagine.”

Smith is sitting in his training kit in the tiny referee’s changing room at Arnold Town’s Eagle Valley stadium, where County train. Outside, the car park is pitted with potholes. It is a world away from the comforts he knew as a Premier League player with the Uniteds of Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle, but, as Smith notes in pure Yorkshire, football at every level “is still the same game”.

He continues: “Us going to Accrington Stanley and winning means as much to our supporters and our players as Man United going to the Emirates and winning. I don’t ever look back and think, ‘Remember when I was there’. You have to live for now.

“Football changes so quickly. That day at Anfield I could have been done, I could have been finished. It was where I started [with a goal on his Leeds debut in 1998] and where I could have finished. People can say, ‘You did this, you did that’, but what about what I can do and what I can achieve? Our goal now for our club is to try to get out of this league and that will be as rewarding as anything that I have ever done.”

The immediate goal for Ricardo Moniz’s League Two team is to avoid an upset at a Salford side who have never before reached this stage of the Cup. “If we are not right, then we will be in for a shock,” Smith warns. “People say they’re minnows but I watched that programme and there are players probably earning as much money at Salford as they are here. There were financial figures that came out on that programme that I was shocked by, but that is where a lot of non-league clubs are at. Fleetwood have done it, Crawley did it and Salford, with the backing of the lads and Peter Lim [the Singapore businessman who has a 50 per cent stake], will have that opportunity.”

Smith, who won the last of his 19 England caps in November 2007, can speak with authority on lower league football. After leaving Newcastle in 2012 he spent two and a half years with MK Dons in League One before moving on to Meadow Lane two summers ago. He takes a sip from his mug of tea and breaks into a grin. “I love it. I have played at every level now – Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two. Every competition too – FA Cup, League Cup, Johnstone’s Paint or whatever you call it. I still have that hunger and desire to do it, as much as I ever have done. Even more so because you are thinking, in the back of your mind, I want to carry on playing next year.”

Gary Neville was the first person on the scene when Alan Smith was injured playing for United (Liverpool FC)

The once spiky striker is now a holding midfielder who has yet to score for Notts County. “A massive part of my game is trying to influence the players around me, to have an impact on them and help them through a game. You might not be a standout player, where everyone thinks, ‘Oh you’ve been a Premier League player’, but you need to be there to help your mate next to you and your mate behind you and in front of you. That is the main importance for me now.”

Smith, who did some coaching under County’s former manager Shaun Derry last season, has an evident empathy for his fellow pro. “The lads at this level are playing for the love of it because it is not life-changing financially. You have to give more leeway to them. You can’t expect them to do everything bang on the button.”

Smith speaks of his own limitations, too. Still to be playing is, he believes, “one of my biggest achievements”, given the impact of the freak injury he sustained in that 2006 FA Cup tie from attempting to block a John Arne Riise free-kick. “Even when I see it now I just think, ‘How did that happen?’ Sometimes the worst injuries are the most innocuous ones. It has taken away a massive part of my game. Otherwise I would still be playing at a higher level. It is the movement, it is so restricted but I don’t moan about it, I am lucky to be playing. It is not at the level everyone would dream of but I never did take football for granted.”

Smith laughs as he remembers his early days at Leeds. “I look back and watch games from when I first got into the team and think, ‘I was bad then’. Further on in your career you don’t lose balls that you’d lose and you don’t give away possession so easily.”

It was after Leeds’ relegation in 2004 that Smith left for Old Trafford in a transfer that stirred ill feelings among the fans at Elland Road. Like his family back in Yorkshire he remains a Leeds fan – “when you grow up supporting a club that is the club you are always going to support” – and explains how difficult it was to witness the club’s implosion.

“We turned up for pre-season with Peter Reid and had nine players [but] never once did I think during the season we would get relegated. It is difficult when reality sets in. As a player you never really know the financial situation. I knew a little bit more when I was coming to leave [as] there were players leaving for a quarter of the price they should have been. It was hard to see the suffering of people who’ve supported the club for such a long time.”

That said, it was easy to settle at Old Trafford. “There is a big fan rivalry but inside the clubs there is just mutual admiration. When I went there lads who had played Leeds-Man United were, ‘We want Leeds to get back up’, because those games were the games you want to be involved in.”

He believes both clubs saw him at his peak. “The period of time from 2000 to 2006 was my best. My first year at Man United was some of the best football I have played.” And now for the reunion with his Old Trafford team-mates. “It will be good fun. I am looking forward to seeing them all. They will want to beat us so bad.” Knowing Smith, the feeling will once again be mutual.