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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 ...

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“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching’ than to say ‘My heart is broken’.”
― C.S. Lewis

Stan Collymore divides opinion, not least among Villa fans. We love one of our own, as Dean Smith and Jack Gre...

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In the fifties it used to be that if we were ever short of a player we would pop along to the Molineux to see who they had going spare.  This was a policy that turned out to be moderately successful but a lesson from twenty years earlier might have taught us to be a little more circumspect.

As professional footballers go James Clayton had a very odd career. He was born in Sunderland, wh...

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Over the years, Villa Park has played host to some wonderful sides and some fantastic footballers. We’d argue some of them have worn claret and blue. Rightfully. Some haven’t.

Lockdown has seen us reminisce more than ever about some classic encounters in B6. Santos and Barcelona (1978 vintage) are perhaps the most lauded sides to have ever visited B6, each containing a truly world clas...

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On the principle that if you can’t beat them, join them production of the Villa News was handed over to Sports Projects, who had master minded the award winning Norwich City programme last campaign. Their first act in taking over the Villa programme was to bring it down to terrace-manageable size.  But even more oddly the first programme of the season was a six page fold-out version for a friendly...

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That we miss Jack like hell goes without saying. The first twenty minutes against Spurs with their back four playing like frightened rabbits would have given him a field day.  That the team plays significantly less well without him is beyond doubt and is continually used as a stick to beat us with.
Anyone who knows the game, including a few TV pundits, know full well that Jack is not only th...

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At the beginning of the season I asked the question of whether Villa players really needed international football; more specifically whether our English players needed to play for England after Jack Grealish had yet again been overlooked by Gareth Southgate. This was really me ranting about the most obviously in-form attacking player in the country seemingly being deliberately excluded from the st...

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Mindful of the travelling problems last summer we chose to end the decade by staying a little closer to home this pre-season round. Heart of Midlothian (3-1) and Dundee United (0-3). Sadly Andy Gray was unfit so had to be satisfied with only a round of applause from his former admirers. This northern excursion was followed by a Friday night visit from Enschede 65 from Holland (2-0).

Bol...