Thank you Mike. What I took to be scaffolding on the spire of Holy Trinity is of course the 'V' shape of the floodlights.
Can't be. The Holte End roof had been extended in the summer of 1990 and the Trinity Road roof was reprofiled. For me, Villa Park attained perfection in 1994. The last season of the Holte and the Witton finally going double decker. It had always been a decent ground up to that point, but the old Witton looked out of place. Like a third division stand. Used to cut of the view of the pitch from a big chunk of the Holte End on the right too, which was a pisser.
The reasons for demolishing the old Holte were sound enough - giving a stand that age the type of facilities customers expect nowadays would have been next to impossible. With the roof extension, there would have been four pillars blocking the view. Bad enough when your're standing, and have the option to move around. Even worse in a fixed location.And yet. And yet.Our recent visit to Hillsborough shows the old and the new can co-exist alongside each other.