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One or two reading this may recall that quite a while ago I had the bright idea of looking at Villa’s performances in the seasons immediately following a World Cup as I had long held a theory that our form dipped every four years. After I had examined the stats in more detail my theory just about held up: going down in 1959, 1967 and 1987 as well as fighting relegation battles in 1991 and 1995, wh...

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It would have been fitting if Villa and Liverpool had delayed their Youth Cup final re-match by another twelve months, to make the gap between these two clubs contesting for the trophy a round fifty years. No matter, we got ourselves a good enough contest with a winning result, and the nature of the performances, both then and now, gave Villa fans much comfort at the time, and allows us now the vi...

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Having a total aversion to Subbuteo football (where the only player doing anything is the one with the ball) I choose not to bother with this television extravaganza other than to dip into it during the adverts on the other channel or other idle periods

Hence I barely saw twenty minutes of Italy v Switzerland where the commentators were waxing lyrical on the apparent flare of the Italia...

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It is not unknown for us to leave the field to a chorus of disapproval; I remember Big Ron after a particularly dire performance being asked by a journo if he had heard the booing at the end, to which he replied, "Yes, and I started it". I must admit I enjoyed the Tottenham soundtrack knowing which beacon of the fair deal it was aimed at. After all, N17’s finest had come seamlessly from bei...

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The money had almost run out by the time David O’Leary began his third and final year in charge at Villa Park. A remarkable sixth-place finish in 2004 had been followed by a mid-table one, and the Ellis piggy bank, almost but not quite emptied by the mixed fortunes of John Gregory in the transfer market, was being rattled one last time.

One of several problem areas was in defence, where...

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It’s forever been a mystery to me why Villa have never employed my encyclopaedic knowledge of football to inform the club’s strategy regarding transfer targets; they could also ask me about tactics and selection while they’re at it, as I’m known to be a generous soul. Nevertheless, this unjust iron rule was still in place in August 2012, when a mate of mine, big Derby fan, asked me if I fanc...

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I was not at all surprised when the ill-fated European Super League launched itself. After all, it had been coming for some years. What upset me - and, I suspect, many of you - was the involvement of six clubs from our own league, all of whom were long-standing rivals of a hundred years or more, sometimes better than us and sometimes not, but whose owners evidently have a shared level of contempt ...

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It is 19th April 2021 and I feel disgusted with football. I should clarify that this isn’t about Villa but the professional sport of football.
 
For years I have been kidding myself that football isn’t just about money and that true competition within the game does exist. After all there are shocks such as, a then, non-league Lincoln City beating Premier League Burnley, romance like Burt...

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According to PETA (https://tinyurl.com/7xcaefv), "to produce foie gras (the French term means 'fatty liver'), workers ram pipes down the throats of male ducks twice each day, pumping up to 2.2 pounds of grain and fat into their stomachs, or geese three times a day, up to four pounds daily, in a process known as 'gavage'. The force-feeding causes the birds’ livers to swell to up to ten times the...

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1967: Preston North End and Liverpool

For a struggling top-drawer team, an away draw against a second division side for the third round of the cup offers the chance of a run that might inspire an improvement in the team’s league form. Preston North End were drawn out first, so off to the north-west we went. For those with a good working idea of football history, this was a clash ...