For a man who once scored the winning goal in a European Cup final for the reigning English champions, it might have seemed like a small achievement.
Yet Peter Withe felt a strong sense of satisfaction as his struggling Thai club side avoided relegation on the final day of the season last weekend. Withe is a coaching hero in Thailand after helping the national team become champions of Southeast Asia in 2000 and 2002. These days, he carries the same passion as he manages Nakhon Pathom United FC, a relatively obscure club in the nation's second tier.
Nakhon Pathom United secured their status for next season in Thai Division 1 -- which is one rung below the Premier League -- with a 5-1 victory over bottom-placed Sriracha Ban Bueng that saw them finish 13th on the table.
"I'm very proud of the result because when I took over in August, I was asked to see if I could turn things around, as they were virtually gone," Withe told ESPN FC. "We got the players organised and fitter, and we started to win games."
Nakhon Pathom United are a small, central Thailand club, without a major sponsor, about 60 kilometres west of Bangkok. Their 6,000-capacity home ground is a lot smaller than the imposing Rajamangala stadium in the capital where Withe masterminded Thailand's 4-1 victory over Indonesia in the 2000 AFF Championship final.
Just five months before his latest job, Withe was sacked as manager of newly promoted Premier League side PTT Rayong after six months in charge, following a faltering start to the season. He reluctantly returned to Thai club football in a lower division at the request of a player at Nakhon Pathom United.
Yet the Liverpool-born 63-year-old has no intention of fading into obscurity in Asia's lesser leagues. He insists that his long-term goal hasn't changed: He still wants to become manager of his beloved Aston Villa, at which he worked for a decade -- as a player and then in a variety of coaching roles.
"It's always been my ambition to manage Aston Villa. Am I capable of doing it? Of course I am," he said.
"In Asia, it's often a case of 'out of sight, out of mind,' but I've previously worked in many different coaching roles at Villa, apart from the manager's job. In many ways, coaching in Asia is harder than managing in the Premier League."
In 1991, when Withe was reserve-team coach at Aston Villa, he took the job as manager of Wimbledon in the English top flight. But after just one victory in 13 games, he was replaced by Joe Kinnear and returned to Villa Park in a lesser coaching role.
After a promising start to the season, Aston Villa have slumped to 16th spot on the table after six successive defeats.
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"I've met [manager] Paul Lambert on a number of occasions, and he's passionate about the club," Withe said. "But it's a results-based business, and the fans are clearly unhappy."
An imposing striker who earned 11 England caps and went to the 1982 World Cup, Withe scored 20 times in 36 matches as Aston Villa won the 1981 English title. But it was his goal that slayed Bayern Munich in the 1982 European Cup final in Rotterdam, Netherlands, that earned him footballing immortality.
In all, he played 182 league games for Villa, scoring 74 goals. He'd taken an unusual route to English and European success, having played in South Africa and the North American Soccer League (NASL) in the 1970s. At the Portland Timbers, with which he played in the 1975 Soccer Bowl, he was known as the "Wizard of Nod" for his headed goals.
Withe reinvented himself when he came to Southeast Asia in 1998, venturing into the unknown. After being in charge of Thailand for four years, he had a three-year spell as head coach of Indonesia.
He was less successful with the Merah Putih but he did take them to the brink of winning the 2004 AFF Championship on home soil, just days after the Boxing Day tsunami. Following an emotional semifinal win over Malaysia, Indonesia lost the final 5-2 on aggregate to Singapore.
Since leaving the Indonesia job in 2007, Withe and his wife, Kathy, lived in Perth, Western Australia, before he moved back to England to work as manager of nonleague Stockport Sports FC in 2012.
Withe is well known in other parts of Asia, thanks to his appearances a decade ago as a pundit on ESPN's English Premier League coverage from Singapore.
But more than any other nation, Thailand seems to hold the strongest grip on him. The family connection to the so-called Land of Smiles has been further cemented by his 43-year-old son, Jason, who coached his third Thai club, Sonkhla United, this season.
The two Withes, who worked together in the Indonesian national setup between 2005 and 2007, faced each other as opposing head coaches for the first time in an interclub friendly in August.
The senior Withe isn't sure whether he will stay on with Nakhon Pathom United for another season. But he says he continues to be surprised by the reaction of fans wherever he goes in Thailand.
"I'm staggered and humbled by the number of people who've approached me for autographs and, of course, selfies, which are so popular here in Thailand," he said. "Some of them seem far too young to remember me as the national coach."
His dream of managing Aston Villa seems like pie-in-the-sky stuff. But then again, many of the goals he's achieved over the past 40 years were equally far-fetched.