In his first interview since his axing, the former FFA technical manager told au.fourfourtwo.com much media criticism of him has been uninformed and biased.

Smith – who played a key role behind the scenes in the Socceroos' World Cup 2006 campaign - also said many factors were out of his control at Members Equity.

“Some people in the media don't tell the truth - surprise surprise - and obviously have their own agenda," he said.

"My ability to coach senior players was questioned, as if I hadn't done it before.

“I took the job because I like a challenge. Even though many people close to me said don't do it, you're walking into a nightmare.

"And they were proven right in the end, what with the club being without owners plus the squad I was walking into. I don't regret it though.

“One comment was that I had scant success in Malaysia.

"The truth is that I took over Sabah when they were 13th out of 15 in the M-League in 1995, when the standard of play was much much better than it is now, with eight games left to qualify for the Malaysia Cup.

"We came fifth in the league and were knocked out of the M-Cup in the semi final in a penalty shootout.

“The following season, without signing any new players we won the league and reached the final of the Malaysia Cup, only to lose in a penalty shoot out to Selangor, the Manchester Utd of Malaysia, when I was coaching the equivalent of a Birmingham City.

"We came third in the league the following season again without adding new players - not because I didn't want to, but the club wouldn't let me.”

Smith argues that the job of turning around Glory was huge.

After Steve McMahon's axing in December 2005, interim coach Alan Vest took over until Smith finally was appointed eight months later, during which the club was under FFA control.

“Having had the experience of working successfully with teams in the 'underdog' category I decided to take on the job at Perth," he said.

"The reality was that I had half a season to change things around and be challenging for a top four spot and didn't make it.

“It's interesting that in football, people always say that results are everything - and it's true.

"However, when you win and play poorly, which every team does from time to time, except at Perth this season, the same people then attack the quality of your performance, saying things like 'you won , but you can't play like that every week' or 'you won but you can't be happy with the performance'.

“If you play good football and dominate your opponent but lose, the same people say, 'you played really well but didn't win and that's what's important', so basically you can't win as a coach unless you play well and win games.

“What do you do to play well? You work with the players on individual aspects of their game, group skills and teamwork in attack and defence and that takes time.”

Time is a point Smith also argues regarding preparation of the side for this year's campaign.

“In reality, the preparation time for this season was pretty short," he added.

"And some of it was totally beyond my control. I didn't actually have all of my players together till July.

"We actually went to Malaysia in late June to play some games and that was it really. Four games in around ten days, so there wasn't an awful lot of time for practise so to speak.

"So we had about 10 days in July to prepare the side, then we had the pre-season competition.

“And who would've predicted that we would've ended up playing five games away from home on the trot in that tournament?”

Incredibly, Glory reached the final of the pre-season tournament – only to lose to rivals Adelaide United.

Since then, a nightmare unfolded with Glory failing to win any of its first 12 games. And that's when Smith was sacked.

“If I had wanted to protect my job, I might have done things differently but I didn't want to do that because that would have been against my basic philosophy of how I would like my team to play," he added.

“John O'Neill, former FFA CEO, once said to me, 'don't die wondering, if you believe in doing something , do it, there are no guarantees of success in sport'.

"I did what I believed in and have no regrets, I would have liked more time with the current squad, but now it's time to do something else and fortunately I have several opportunities to consider.”

In part two later this week, Smith talks about Stan Lazaridis' drug scandal, the signing of Mate Dragicevic, Glory's players, his successor David Mitchell, the club's name and the Perth fans.