Well for a start, here are the league positions over the 20 years from 1960-perhaps they speak to the standard of our football - never higher than 15th in a 22-team League for 9 years running - followed by a catastrophic spell in the 2nd DivThe club was in terminal decline from the highlight of promotion at the first attempt in 1960 - under managers ranging from Joe Mercer (whose pedigree was impeccable) to Dick Knight & Tommy Cumming (less impeccable - Knight later ran a TV/Radio shop on the Witton Road and Tommy C went back to Burnley to run a pub). The decline was slowed, halted and eventually reversed by the Percy Matthews/Doug Ellis takeover in 1968, though even they couldn't stay out of the 3rd under Tommy Docherty . The club would have gone out of business without Doug - I remain convinced of that - the pre-Ellis board were appallingly behind the times - and couldn't handle the debt that Knight had incurred by some apparently crap signings - which is why the club sold their Trinity Road training ground.I was only an occasional supporter being at school - so I can only guess at what the football was like - but the "new broom" started in the old Div 3 - under the hand of Vic Crowe and I remember then really starting to support them home and away - with a team that was the best since 1960 - even then it was the feeling that the sleeping giant was awakening - it was brilliant a run of improvement that continued to 1982.
I wonder how different out history might have been if the weather didn't turn to shit in...
All that anyone needs to know about the Villa in the 1960s is that we drove Joe Mercer to a nervous breakdown. He then went to Man City and with Malcolm Allison won them the league in 1968 - overshadowed by Man U winning the European cup - and went on to manage England. Even Joe could not manage villa, the club was bankrupt in every wayA friend recalls coming to Villa Park for a cup game with Oxford, looking forward to the great ground he had heard so much about, and being shocked to see broken window panes, Villa could not even fix the windows,And we sold the training ground, the Hercules ground so the team had to borrow works pitches to train on. Deadly bought Bodymoor and stopped that nonsense.It was awful in the 1960s. The weekend before Docherty arrived we got 12,500 people in a 62,500 capacity ground and I can remember hearing players shouting to each other - and there was an echo. A nightmare in every way
Quote from: SirSteveUK on September 25, 2016, 11:37:52 PMWell for a start, here are the league positions over the 20 years from 1960-perhaps they speak to the standard of our football - never higher than 15th in a 22-team League for 9 years running - followed by a catastrophic spell in the 2nd DivThe club was in terminal decline from the highlight of promotion at the first attempt in 1960 - under managers ranging from Joe Mercer (whose pedigree was impeccable) to Dick Knight & Tommy Cumming (less impeccable - Knight later ran a TV/Radio shop on the Witton Road and Tommy C went back to Burnley to run a pub). The decline was slowed, halted and eventually reversed by the Percy Matthews/Doug Ellis takeover in 1968, though even they couldn't stay out of the 3rd under Tommy Docherty . The club would have gone out of business without Doug - I remain convinced of that - the pre-Ellis board were appallingly behind the times - and couldn't handle the debt that Knight had incurred by some apparently crap signings - which is why the club sold their Trinity Road training ground.I was only an occasional supporter being at school - so I can only guess at what the football was like - but the "new broom" started in the old Div 3 - under the hand of Vic Crowe and I remember then really starting to support them home and away - with a team that was the best since 1960 - even then it was the feeling that the sleeping giant was awakening - it was brilliant a run of improvement that continued to 1982.Do you mean Dick Taylor?