This summer feeling like summer of 95

[LeeB]

I had forgot that friendly. We missed the first twenty minutes trying to get into the shit hole.

Twas ever thus.

You'd have thought it was a title decider, useless bastards.

[peter w]

Remember the summer of 95?

We signed relatively un known players .

We had a young manager on the way up

We had a tough season the year before

I am getting same excitement levels this summer , we had then and its looking really positive .

Not quite for me. Back then we had a half decent side and we signed some good players. We thought we were getting closer to good things as in winning trophies. I'm not sure how is that comparable to now.Excitement wise, maybe, but with lower expectation levels.

Back then we'd escaped relegation on the last day and didn't expect to do much better.

The summer we signed Draper, Southgate, and Savo? Don't agree with that. the didn't expect to do much better, bit.

[eamonn]

It was a lot easier then to go from a dog of a season to be challenging near the top the next.

[not3bad]

I remember Dean Saunders and Dalian Atkinson leaving and thinking "Oh no!".  But then Brian Little just said "Not to worry, we've still got Dwight Yorke".  And I thought "Oh yeah!"

[Percy McCarthy]

I went over to wiki to refresh my memories on 94/95 and found the passage below to be particularly intersting:

Before the season was over, a new era was already in the making at Villa Park. A number of players now past their best were off-loaded to new clubs; these included Ray Houghton, Garry Parker, Kevin Richardson and Earl Barrett. The close season saw more players from the Atkinson era pass through the Villa Park exit door; Shaun Teale, Dalian Atkinson, Dean Saunders and John Fashanu. Little brought in younger players like Mark Draper, Ian Taylor, Savo Milosevic, Nii Lamptey, Carl Tiler, Gary Charles and Alan Wright, to give some much-needed strength to a side of fading stars as well as giving such much-needed hope to fans of a club which had been rescued from the threat of a rapid decline.

I had actually forgotten that we were that close to relegation but it was an unusual season.

A pedant writes: Little didn't buy Lamptey.

[TonyD]

Min of 6th. 

[cheltenhamlion]

And Little did sign Charles but that was the previous January.

[Percy McCarthy]

And Little did sign Charles but that was the previous January.

Yes, along with Alan Wright and Tommy Johnson.