Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: Fergal on January 12, 2014, 05:29:49 AM
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What are or were the mistakes and missed opportunities that stopped us from being a real sustained power in the game.
Not keeping Ron Saunders? Getting rid of Tony Barton? The appointment of MoN?
What players should we have signed when we had the chance or not signed or players we should never have let go?
What were the real turning points in our history?
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Ellis taking over from Bendall,
Allowing Saunders to leave,
Cowans and Shaw injuries,
Signing Cascarino instead of Sheringham,
Not signing Cantona ( especially as he was more an Atkinson player than a Ferguson one),
Not signing Juniniho under Gregory,
The 2000 FA Cup Final,
The mishandling of Mon
The mishandling of appointing Mon's successor.
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Emile Heskey & switching to 4-4-2
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Luc Nilis' horrible injury, I think, was a massive loss that led to be a missed opportunity. That guy was a top level goal scorer, also allowed other strikers and the team play well around him. Ageing, sure, but he was still class.
I agree with the others listed too.
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MON.
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Justin Edinburgh clearing off the line - was it over? - and the 6 minutes of injury time at Hillsborough.
Was that even on the same day? That's how I remember it.
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Justin Edinburgh clearing off the line - was it over? - and the 6 minutes of injury time at Hillsborough.
Was that even on the same day? That's how I remember it.
Edinburghs was a mid week game, Fergie time the 1st was at Old Trafford.
Agreed though, two huge moments.
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Summer of 1994 Blackburn signed Chris Sutton, we signed John Fashanu.
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Justin Edinburgh clearing off the line - was it over? - and the 6 minutes of injury time at Hillsborough.
Was that even on the same day? That's how I remember it.
Edinburghs was a mid week game, Fergie time the 1st was at Old Trafford.
Agreed though, two huge moments.
I should be a historian with accuracy like that.
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The departure of Ron Saunders
Doug breaking up the European Cup winning team too quickly/Not allowing Tony Barton to manage his way/Replacing Tony Barton with Graham Turner
Graham Taylor leaving for the England job
Going backwards in the last eighteen months under BFR
Brian Little losing his mojo
The decision making since MON left
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European Champs to relegation in 4 years! Thanks for that Mr. Ellis!
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Summer of '96. We needed a striker to push on and a creative midfielder (finished 4th, won the league cup and semi's of the FA Cup)... We only bought Curcic, Ellis wouldn't saction any more buys. We stagnated and went backwards and that was it.
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selling gary cahill and instead having heroes such as Cuellar, Knight, Davies and Collins at the back instead.
Emile Heskey & switching to 4-4-2
great call smoke, our results that season after buying Heskey and switching formation were horrendous.
Two examples of MON at his absolute worst.
big mistake was the board turning a blind eye to the growth in wages under MON.
Lerner buying Stephen Ireland without a manager.
Villa supporters generally made a big mistake burying their heads in the sand re Lerner, Krulak etc when questions should have been asked a lot sooner.
robbie keane would have been a great signing for the club. crazy gregory and ellis didnt go the extra 500k for a young player.
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Most of the above though I do feel a championship win for us in 1992/93 would have merely delayed by a year the emergence of United under Fergie, first Premiership or not.
Csn I add failing to sign Robbie Keane from Wolves? I think he'd have done very well for us in his early years and if we had sold him on would have made a huge profit. Under Gregory we tended to sign older players with no sell-on value.
There has also been an element of bad luck about the past twenty years: Managing to fall outside the European places in 1998/99 despite being top at Christmas. Sixth not being enough for Europe in 2003/2004. The emergence of Man City really buggered us c. 2008/09 too....
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Repeatedly buying a season ticket. That's a mistake I never seem to learn from.
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Summer of '96. We needed a striker to push on and a creative midfielder (finished 4th, won the league cup and semi's of the FA Cup)... We only bought Curcic, Ellis wouldn't saction any more buys. We stagnated and went backwards and that was it.
didnt joachim come in that summer?
only got 2 points (and one place less) in 96/97 than we did in 95/96.
think little's inability to maintain discipline behind the scenes with the various playboys at the club was the reason we stagnated. but that was moreso the year after following the addition of one Stanley Collymore.
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The leaving of Ron Saunders which was down to the bendalls. Saunders wanted total control of the club like fergie got at manure. Every position was covered in triplicate from 1st team to youth so a natural progression was in place for us to dominate for years to come but it all got messed up within a few years a crying shame really.
In recent years for me not signing les Ferdinand, mon signing heskey and going from 4-3-3 to 4-4-2 which I still can't work out to this day.or going back even more the Saunders team of gray-little-deehan should of been good enough to win the league before 80/81 but it just didn't happen.
Another thing is the players we have signed over the years that have looked good players for there clubs(which is why we sign them) then just don't do it for the villa curcic,Thompson from Bolton to name a couple or the players we let go that are deemed not good enough for us then push on to become better players for other teams like Cahill,routledge,bannan and the list could go on and on but maybe that's for another thread.
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Hindsight is easy but I wouldn't have signed Downing in summer 2009 for 12m, I'd have signed Bent for 10m as he went to Sunderland for around that figure. Milner and Young would've just stayed on the flanks like they did the previous season. Gabby could've also played out wide again
Really we need a finisher in that team, gabby and Carew did well in that period but neither could get more than 15 league goals, we need someone to push onto 20 league goals. I'm convinced we would've made top 4 in 09-10.
Flip side though is Milner wouldn't have probably been moved to central midfield so our team performances might not have been so strong.....but we'd probably have kept him for a little longer as utility players don't tend to attract 20m + bids.
That's my last big what if moment as that's the last team we had that could compete at the top level of the prem.
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think little's inability to maintain discipline behind the scenes with the various playboys at the club was the reason we stagnated. but that was moreso the year after following the addition of one Stanley Collymore.
Can you expand on this? Not sure what you're referring to.
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Moscow.
We came back to pre-season early, busted a gut to get through the qualifiers and group matches to reach the knock-out stage, made a big thing of promoting the whole European adventure, only for MON to then treat the competition with contempt, stick two fingers up at the fans, and bail out of the competition.
If only we could turn the clock back to John Carew's second goal against Stoke.
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1) Nothing to do with the football side of things, but knocking down the Trinity Road still makes me shake my head.
2) I think we got rid of Graham Taylor (MkII) way too soon and I always feel sad that he departed the club, second time round, on a low note. Afforded a little more time I think he could have built something special as he was assembling a side full of very good young players.
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Drawing with Stoke after being 2-0 up. The beginning of the end of where we thought we could go with MON and Lerner.
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the ref adding that fergie time on against Sheff Wed was a massive mistake , not that it was anything to do with our making . if we had won that league that year .
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Gregory & O'Neill not utilising the money they were given to build a competitive team for the long term.
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Yeah go back to summer of 97 and signing Collymore was an error. At the time we were a regular in the top 5 and weren't far off a title challenging team but Collymore just upset the team dynamic (pretty sure we started playing Yorke in midfield?!) and the dressing room.
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Yeah go back to summer of 97 and signing Collymore was an error. At the time we were a regular in the top 5 and weren't far off a title challenging team but Collymore just upset the team dynamic (pretty sure we started playing Yorke in midfield?!) and the dressing room.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I think we all felt, and hoped, that Collymore would be the missing piece of the jigsaw to push us up a level. Instead we seemed to implode a little, then lost Yorke the following summer. But with Collymore's attitude being very questionnable back then (which we now know can be partly attributed to his problems with depression), perhaps Little should have learned his lesson after Curcic. I wonder if we'd made a signing akin to Zola or Bergkamp, whether we'd have been better off. Maybe Nilis a few years before we eventually got him?
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The departure of Ron Saunders
Doug breaking up the European Cup winning team too quickly/Not allowing Tony Barton to manage his way/Replacing Tony Barton with Graham Turner
Graham Taylor leaving for the England job
Going backwards in the last eighteen months under BFR
Brian Little losing his mojo
The decision making since MON left
I always thought that the Brian Little / John Gregory partnership could have been another Clough / Taylor in the making.
Little was an excellent manager while Gregory was an excellent coach.
When JG left to go it alone BL tried (or was he made) to do both jobs. It didn't work.
I felt that Doug started to interfere, where as if the pair had stayed together they would have stood up to him.
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Yeah go back to summer of 97 and signing Collymore was an error. At the time we were a regular in the top 5 and weren't far off a title challenging team but Collymore just upset the team dynamic (pretty sure we started playing Yorke in midfield?!) and the dressing room.
I think I may have been the only one who didn't want Collymore.
Savo and Yorke were beginning to form a lethal partnership, the bringing in of Collymore upset the balance.
As tom says, though, Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
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The 1914-18 war. We were never quite the same after that.
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Yeah go back to summer of 97 and signing Collymore was an error. At the time we were a regular in the top 5 and weren't far off a title challenging team but Collymore just upset the team dynamic (pretty sure we started playing Yorke in midfield?!) and the dressing room.
I think I may have been the only one who didn't want Collymore.
Savo and Yorke were beginning to form a lethal partnership, the bringing in of Collymore upset the balance.
As tom says, though, Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I was only eleven, but at the time felt we needed a central midfielder to replace Townsend in 1997/98.
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Hindsight is easy but I wouldn't have signed Downing in summer 2009 for 12m, I'd have signed Bent for 10m as he went to Sunderland for around that figure. Milner and Young would've just stayed on the flanks like they did the previous season. Gabby could've also played out wide again
Really we need a finisher in that team, gabby and Carew did well in that period but neither could get more than 15 league goals, we need someone to push onto 20 league goals. I'm convinced we would've made top 4 in 09-10.
Flip side though is Milner wouldn't have probably been moved to central midfield so our team performances might not have been so strong.....but we'd probably have kept him for a little longer as utility players don't tend to attract 20m + bids.
That's my last big what if moment as that's the last team we had that could compete at the top level of the prem.
12m was crazy money for Downing who was injured and had been gutless the season before with Boro going down.
But I'm not sure Bent would have been a huge success back then either. This was a time when Cuellar was at right back and Young at left back. At home teams used effectively bottle us up by forcing our full backs to have the ball, not sure Bent would have been able to help us out then, sure more than Heskey but Gabby and Carew had very effective stints up front alone and/or together around that time.
Strange but in 07/08 we got 71 league goals, our best return for about 20 years in front of goal. In 08/09 (54) and 09/10 (52), defensive solidity came at a price.
The fabled number ten would have been a better bet than Bent I suspect.
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Yeah go back to summer of 97 and signing Collymore was an error. At the time we were a regular in the top 5 and weren't far off a title challenging team but Collymore just upset the team dynamic (pretty sure we started playing Yorke in midfield?!) and the dressing room.
I think I may have been the only one who didn't want Collymore.
Savo and Yorke were beginning to form a lethal partnership, the bringing in of Collymore upset the balance.
As tom says, though, Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Absolutely. I didn't want him either and as you say, it completely disrupted the team.
Most of our mistakes and missed opportunities are of Ellis's making. The late 90s were pivotal for the state of the game at the moment. That was when the Champions League started expanding and the TV money skyrocketed. If Ellis had gone the extra step we all knew the team needed in the mid-90s we'd have been up there to take advantage of the expanding Champions League. As it happened, we weren't and have been playing catch up ever since.
Now I think we're too far away and with the arrival of Abramovich and the Sheihk it'll be a long time before we are at that top table again.
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Actually in hindsight, we didn't buy well enough after the first sixth finish. You have just reminded me how exciting the 0708 season was with some terrific performances. We spent a lot that summer to effectively stand still.
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Saunders leaving was a big mistake - and I suspect, with hindsight, he'd agree that it was for him, too. Although I still reckon we wouldn't have won the European Cup with him still in charge. Tony Barton somehow re-galvanised the squad at the back end at what must rank as one of the worst-ever post-war title defences.
The departure of SGT to be Fleet Street's Turnip still hurts. We would have won silverware during the early 90s under Taylor, possibly the League, when you consider that the following year an iffy Arsenal won the Championship in 91 and the year after it was Leeds...
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I just think Bent would've been good for our style of player. Milner and Young hitting in crosses every 5 minutes, Bent would've clinically finished more of them off than obviously Heskey and Gabby.
I'm sure that would've resulted in a couple of those frustrating home draws into three points. One that sticks out in my mind was drawing 0-0 at home to Wigan when we hit the post twice and had 3 cleared off the line, I'm sure Bent would've stuck one of those away. Not sure if it was 08/09 or the following season.
Number 10? No idea where he would've fitted in MON's rigid 4-4-2. The closest we had was Maloney really who was just a squad player.
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think little's inability to maintain discipline behind the scenes with the various playboys at the club was the reason we stagnated. but that was moreso the year after following the addition of one Stanley Collymore.
Can you expand on this? Not sure what you're referring to.
ah there was rumours galore around that time re the antics of a number of players at the club off the pitch including bosnich, charles, hendrie, yorke and curcic
the infamous bosnich and yorke sex tape being the prime example
little didnt have the fergie like iron fist to bring these lads into line and had his own problems too later on in that regard
pity because we were played some great football under little including the league cup final in 96. should have kicked on considering the players we had.
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Saunders leaving was a big mistake - and I suspect, with hindsight, he'd agree that it was for him, too. Although I still reckon we wouldn't have won the European Cup with him still in charge. Tony Barton somehow re-galvanised the squad at the back end at what must rank as one of the worst-ever post-war title defences.
The departure of SGT to be Fleet Street's Turnip still hurts. We would have won silverware during the early 90s under Taylor, possibly the League, when you consider that the following year an iffy Arsenal won the Championship in 91 and the year after it was Leeds...
You make a good point. I think Ron Saunders last game was a 4-1 thrashing at Old Trafford that dropped us into the bottom six. So apart from taking over a side in the quarter finals of the European Cup and going on to win it Tony Barton also took us about half a dozen places up the league to safety. Although it would appear Ron Saunders had only been allowed to bring in one player to strengthen the title winning team. A problem that Tony Barton had under Bendall and Doug. Between the start of the 1980 season and the start of the 1984 season a team that had won their league and then become champions of Europe bought a total of six players in four years and sold probably twice that number.
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Strange though it may seem to say, I think MON not getting/taking the England job after Schteve went can be looked at as a real missed opportunity. Had he gone then, and we had appointed a proper footballing manager at the time when MON had laid the decent groundwork and Randy still had money to spend, the future could have been very different.
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Selling Gary Penrice and Sticks Ormondroyd within a few weeks of each other in the Autumn of 1991. Proof positive that we had given up.
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I just count myself lucky enough to see us go from Third Division Champions to European Champions inside 11 years . Much is made of Wimbledon going from non - league to FA Cup winners etc, however Villa`s achievement is constantly overlooked.
As ever with the Villa its all about continuity - we never seem to maintain a stable base from which to bring about continued success - too many boardroom upheavals, changes of manager and poor signings. I feel sorry for VCTM jnr as he is highly unlikely to witness what I have, following this great club - the saddest thing right now is that neither of us can see any light at the end of the tunnel with the current set up and renewing our seats next season seems highly unlikely - as stated previously - when the ambition returns so will we.
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A lot of the mistakes cited are just the way decisions were made; nobody knows how events would have turned out regardless of what happened and in the words of John Gregory, Hindsight United have never lost a match.
However, and this is something I could write a university thesis about because I said it then, I've said it ever since and when two or more who were present at the time get together they always say it. From Italia '90 until 2002, and in particular between the 1996 League Cup final and the 2000 FA Cup final, no club had the planets align to give them the opportunity to join the elite as often as Villa did. During the biggest boom period English football has ever known, a time when for the first time ever, the monied and literary classes were interested in football, we were the only show in town for a massive chunk of the country. From Manchester to London and from Ireland to the North Sea, there was no other club worth talking about and a whole generation of West Midlands children grew up only knowing the Villa locally in the Premier League. And all we were bothered about was being the biggest club in Birmingham. In 1994 we had the Republic's World Cup captain and their most popular player of all time - you couldn't buy a Villa shirt in Dublin. We had three Muslims in the first team when clubs were desperate to tap in to the UK Asian market - we did nothing to promote the fact. The south-west, then as now, is where Brummies emigrated. You'd struggle to buy a Villa shirt in Worcester, thirty miles away. One club had a visible presence in Birmingham city centre - Manchester Fucking United.
Other clubs were beginning to see the importance of proper media relations and marketing. When asked why we still didn't have a press officer, the master businessman said that we'd tried it before and the media always wanted to speak directly to him. That was thirty years earlier. We didn't have a database of supporters; season ticket holders would get a renewal form and that was it. No reminders, no follow-ups or attempts to get lapsed holders back. I worked harder on renewing H&V subscribers than the club did for season tickets. I could fill a book with the jaw-dropping idiocy they were coming up with at this time, but to give one example they were obsessed with unofficial merchandise - the biggest sales of Villa licensed gear outside Birmingham came from a shop at Merry Hill. The owner unwittingly stocked some counterfeit stuff once. Instead of having a quiet word Villa went in all guns blazing and took him to court, then wonder why he stopped selling their merchandise. Every other club of any size was becoming a supermarket, Villa were a corner shop. We were, as Hyder Jaward said in the Post, the first club to enter the twentieth century and the last big club to leave it.
As a result of this mentality, when Small Heath got promoted in 2002 they were making the headlines, they were seen as the progressive club of the city. We had a ten year start on them, they caught us up within weeks and thank God their inate Birmingham Cityness prevailed because otherwise we would have really been in trouble.
That was the time we could have joined the elite without splashing out; now a billionaire couldn't buy our place there.
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This is a great idea for a thread, because it could literally be infinite. Each individual match has such moments - more & more the way our team is set up nowadays. Then, the historic matches and seasons and parts of seasons and then managers and players and directors... What I have learned with experience is that missed opportunities are usually underrated and always bite our team in the ass. Minimising such mistakes seems to be how the successful teams prevail.
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Dave, that may well be your best post of all time. And you ain't exactly lacking good uns. In short, it was all down to Ellis being a typical self made parochial millionaire, with loads of dosh yet no capability for true business acumen. Sorry to say, but there is something archetypally Brummy about being two steps off the pace commercially. As JLR strikingly proves right now what the second city and its people are capable of, it is galling that they lacked such good leaders in the 20th century.
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You should write that thesis/book Dave based on that post above.
When I get a new group of students I always have ice-breakers where I ask everybody to tell the group about where they come from and what they are into. I always begin by talking about where I grew up and the fact that I am a villa fan and the mature students always say 'yeah, you look about the age that grew up in the mid 90s, when a lot of kids seemed to be villa fans'.
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Dave, that may well be your best post of all time. And you ain't exactly lacking good uns. In short, it was all down to Ellis being a typical self made parochial millionaire, with loads of dosh yet no capability for true business acumen. Sorry to say, but there is something archetypally Brummy about being two steps off the pace commercially. As JLR strikingly proves right now what the second city and its people are capable of, it is galling that they lacked such good leaders in the 20th century.
Awww, shucks. Doug was undoubtedly the right man in 1968 but by the turn of the century he was woefully outdated. As Martin Swain (who could say this far better and with much greater insight than I) put it, he still had the mentality that £1 million was a major fee and £5k a week got you a star, when by then they were reserve team figures. There were so many other things we had going for us - flotation, the NTL deal, first club back in Europe, our local rivals being at their worst-ever - that you can only look back and wonder why we never took off properly. And you have to look at the one constant at the club throughout that time. To paraphrase Sir Graham, "He could make Aston Villa good but he could never make them great."
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I agree, as a club we completely failed to respond to the change to the sector. The Premier league became the biggest show in town and we just plodded along exactly as we had been.
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A lot of the mistakes cited are just the way decisions were made; nobody knows how events would have turned out regardless of what happened and in the words of John Gregory, Hindsight United have never lost a match.
However, and this is something I could write a university thesis about because I said it then, I've said it ever since and when two or more who were present at the time get together they always say it. From Italia '90 until 2002, and in particular between the 1996 League Cup final and the 2000 FA Cup final, no club had the planets align to give them the opportunity to join the elite as often as Villa did. During the biggest boom period English football has ever known, a time when for the first time ever, the monied and literary classes were interested in football, we were the only show in town for a massive chunk of the country. From Manchester to London and from Ireland to the North Sea, there was no other club worth talking about and a whole generation of West Midlands children grew up only knowing the Villa locally in the Premier League. And all we were bothered about was being the biggest club in Birmingham. In 1994 we had the Republic's World Cup captain and their most popular player of all time - you couldn't buy a Villa shirt in Dublin. We had three Muslims in the first team when clubs were desperate to tap in to the UK Asian market - we did nothing to promote the fact. The south-west, then as now, is where Brummies emigrated. You'd struggle to buy a Villa shirt in Worcester, thirty miles away. One club had a visible presence in Birmingham city centre - Manchester Fucking United.
Other clubs were beginning to see the importance of proper media relations and marketing. When asked why we still didn't have a press officer, the master businessman said that we'd tried it before and the media always wanted to speak directly to him. That was thirty years earlier. We didn't have a database of supporters; season ticket holders would get a renewal form and that was it. No reminders, no follow-ups or attempts to get lapsed holders back. I worked harder on renewing H&V subscribers than the club did for season tickets. I could fill a book with the jaw-dropping idiocy they were coming up with at this time, but to give one example they were obsessed with unofficial merchandise - the biggest sales of Villa licensed gear outside Birmingham came from a shop at Merry Hill. The owner unwittingly stocked some counterfeit stuff once. Instead of having a quiet word Villa went in all guns blazing and took him to court, then wonder why he stopped selling their merchandise. Every other club of any size was becoming a supermarket, Villa were a corner shop. We were, as Hyder Jaward said in the Post, the first club to enter the twentieth century and the last big club to leave it.
As a result of this mentality, when Small Heath got promoted in 2002 they were making the headlines, they were seen as the progressive club of the city. We had a ten year start on them, they caught us up within weeks and thank God their inate Birmingham Cityness prevailed because otherwise we would have really been in trouble.
That was the time we could have joined the elite without splashing out; now a billionaire couldn't buy our place there.
Oh if I could have written that post. Spot on Dave. I boycotted Villa Park from 1998 to 2004 because of the old fool as I just couldn't stand to see my ticket money be so recklessly wasted by this parochial so called master businessman and his negligent running of the club at the time.
I've just about forgiven him, but forget it, never.
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A minor one:
In 2007 we spent £5.5m on a season long loan for Scott Carson and Zat Knight to have a back five of Carson, Mellberg, Laursen, Knight and Bouma, while Luke Young went to Boro for £2m.
The following season we spent £12m on Nicky Shorey, Luke Young and Brad Friedel to have a back five of Friedel, Young, Laursen, Knight, Shorey.
What if we'd just spent the money properly in 2007 to have a defence of Friedel, Young, Mellberg, Laursen, Bouma for that season (the first time we finished sixth under O'Neill)?
I don't think there would have been many better defences in the league. Rather than the usual "what if we'd bought Bent instead of Heskey" discussions, the above I think was the real missed opportunity.
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Aside from various missed opportunities to become one of the genuine heavy hitters, it's a spectacular effort to spend as much as we have since 2006 and now have a worse squad than Southampton, Norwich, Stoke et al.
Two of those clubs were in the third tier until quite recently, yet despite years of Premier League stability for us (at worst), they can eclipse us in no time. Lamentable management and decision making at the very top can be levelled at other characters apart from Ellis.
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Justin Edinburgh clearing off the line - was it over? - and the 6 minutes of injury time at Hillsborough.
Was that even on the same day? That's how I remember it.
Edinburghs was a mid week game, Fergie time the 1st was at Old Trafford.
Agreed though, two huge moments.
I should be a historian with accuracy like that.
It was 8 minutes added time at Old Trafford.
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A lot of the mistakes cited are just the way decisions were made; nobody knows how events would have turned out regardless of what happened and in the words of John Gregory, Hindsight United have never lost a match.
However, and this is something I could write a university thesis about because I said it then, I've said it ever since and when two or more who were present at the time get together they always say it. From Italia '90 until 2002, and in particular between the 1996 League Cup final and the 2000 FA Cup final, no club had the planets align to give them the opportunity to join the elite as often as Villa did. During the biggest boom period English football has ever known, a time when for the first time ever, the monied and literary classes were interested in football, we were the only show in town for a massive chunk of the country. From Manchester to London and from Ireland to the North Sea, there was no other club worth talking about and a whole generation of West Midlands children grew up only knowing the Villa locally in the Premier League. And all we were bothered about was being the biggest club in Birmingham. In 1994 we had the Republic's World Cup captain and their most popular player of all time - you couldn't buy a Villa shirt in Dublin. We had three Muslims in the first team when clubs were desperate to tap in to the UK Asian market - we did nothing to promote the fact. The south-west, then as now, is where Brummies emigrated. You'd struggle to buy a Villa shirt in Worcester, thirty miles away. One club had a visible presence in Birmingham city centre - Manchester Fucking United.
Other clubs were beginning to see the importance of proper media relations and marketing. When asked why we still didn't have a press officer, the master businessman said that we'd tried it before and the media always wanted to speak directly to him. That was thirty years earlier. We didn't have a database of supporters; season ticket holders would get a renewal form and that was it. No reminders, no follow-ups or attempts to get lapsed holders back. I worked harder on renewing H&V subscribers than the club did for season tickets. I could fill a book with the jaw-dropping idiocy they were coming up with at this time, but to give one example they were obsessed with unofficial merchandise - the biggest sales of Villa licensed gear outside Birmingham came from a shop at Merry Hill. The owner unwittingly stocked some counterfeit stuff once. Instead of having a quiet word Villa went in all guns blazing and took him to court, then wonder why he stopped selling their merchandise. Every other club of any size was becoming a supermarket, Villa were a corner shop. We were, as Hyder Jaward said in the Post, the first club to enter the twentieth century and the last big club to leave it.
As a result of this mentality, when Small Heath got promoted in 2002 they were making the headlines, they were seen as the progressive club of the city. We had a ten year start on them, they caught us up within weeks and thank God their inate Birmingham Cityness prevailed because otherwise we would have really been in trouble.
That was the time we could have joined the elite without splashing out; now a billionaire couldn't buy our place there.
Oh if I could have written that post. Spot on Dave. I boycotted Villa Park from 1998 to 2004 because of the old fool as I just couldn't stand to see my ticket money be so recklessly wasted by this parochial so called master businessman and his negligent running of the club at the time.
I've just about forgiven him, but forget it, never.
Agreed. We had chance after chance to really establish ourselves as giant club, but Ellis' arrogance and poor vision always got in the way, yet we were always being told by the likes of Gary Newbon that we were lucky under Ellis as our foundation was secure - which it was, but that was just it. We could never build on them. Yes it was great that Lerner came in and invested masses of money into the infrastructure and, initially the playing staff, but it came about fifteen years too late.
In fact, I seem to recall Newbon claiming he advised the board to rename the new Witton Lane Stand in Ellis' honour.
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Great Post by Mr Woodhall.
Villa is still one of a few Clubs that could join the elite, but every season that passes takes that dream further and further away.
It is just as likely of course that we could the other way and start making up the numbers in the lower leagues.
This regimes mistakes are plain to see hurried investment then hurried disinvestment and shockingly poor managerial appointments. Great discussion.
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A lot of the mistakes cited are just the way decisions were made; nobody knows how events would have turned out regardless of what happened and in the words of John Gregory, Hindsight United have never lost a match.
However, and this is something I could write a university thesis about because I said it then, I've said it ever since and when two or more who were present at the time get together they always say it. From Italia '90 until 2002, and in particular between the 1996 League Cup final and the 2000 FA Cup final, no club had the planets align to give them the opportunity to join the elite as often as Villa did. During the biggest boom period English football has ever known, a time when for the first time ever, the monied and literary classes were interested in football, we were the only show in town for a massive chunk of the country. From Manchester to London and from Ireland to the North Sea, there was no other club worth talking about and a whole generation of West Midlands children grew up only knowing the Villa locally in the Premier League. And all we were bothered about was being the biggest club in Birmingham. In 1994 we had the Republic's World Cup captain and their most popular player of all time - you couldn't buy a Villa shirt in Dublin. We had three Muslims in the first team when clubs were desperate to tap in to the UK Asian market - we did nothing to promote the fact. The south-west, then as now, is where Brummies emigrated. You'd struggle to buy a Villa shirt in Worcester, thirty miles away. One club had a visible presence in Birmingham city centre - Manchester Fucking United.
Other clubs were beginning to see the importance of proper media relations and marketing. When asked why we still didn't have a press officer, the master businessman said that we'd tried it before and the media always wanted to speak directly to him. That was thirty years earlier. We didn't have a database of supporters; season ticket holders would get a renewal form and that was it. No reminders, no follow-ups or attempts to get lapsed holders back. I worked harder on renewing H&V subscribers than the club did for season tickets. I could fill a book with the jaw-dropping idiocy they were coming up with at this time, but to give one example they were obsessed with unofficial merchandise - the biggest sales of Villa licensed gear outside Birmingham came from a shop at Merry Hill. The owner unwittingly stocked some counterfeit stuff once. Instead of having a quiet word Villa went in all guns blazing and took him to court, then wonder why he stopped selling their merchandise. Every other club of any size was becoming a supermarket, Villa were a corner shop. We were, as Hyder Jaward said in the Post, the first club to enter the twentieth century and the last big club to leave it.
As a result of this mentality, when Small Heath got promoted in 2002 they were making the headlines, they were seen as the progressive club of the city. We had a ten year start on them, they caught us up within weeks and thank God their inate Birmingham Cityness prevailed because otherwise we would have really been in trouble.
That was the time we could have joined the elite without splashing out; now a billionaire couldn't buy our place there.
Oh if I could have written that post. Spot on Dave. I boycotted Villa Park from 1998 to 2004 because of the old fool as I just couldn't stand to see my ticket money be so recklessly wasted by this parochial so called master businessman and his negligent running of the club at the time.
I've just about forgiven him, but forget it, never.
Agreed. We had chance after chance to really establish ourselves as giant club, but Ellis' arrogance and poor vision always got in the way, yet we were always being told by the likes of Gary Newbon that we were lucky under Ellis as our foundation was secure - which it was, but that was just it. We could never build on them. Yes it was great that Lerner came in and invested masses of money into the infrastructure and, initially the playing staff, but it came about fifteen years too late.
In fact, I seem to recall Newbon claiming he advised the board to rename the new Witton Lane Stand in Ellis' honour.
One thing Ellis always did was make sure he had the media onside. On his side, that is; by Doug Ellis, for the benefit of Doug Ellis. Randy & co have made some horrendous mistakes but I honestly believe that they want what's best for the Villa. Doug wanted what was best for him.
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Sir Graham leaving is the biggest one for me. We had a very solid squad that under his leadership would only get better. The club was settled and played some exciting stuff. That event was not only bad for us, especially given that the PL was about to start, but ended up badly for him too. If I could ever have a football moment in time back to have something done differently it would be that one.
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I heard a tale once, When we were neck and neck going for the title Big Ron wanted to fetch a new striker in, The bloke he wanted was John Aldridge but Doug Ellis wouldn't pay £250,000 for a 30 odd year old striker!!! John Aldridge would have been ideal cover for Dean Saunders and Dalian Atkinson and as we all know the goals dried up end of that season.
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See, that's where these kind of discussions can run aground.
That side in 1989/90 probably performed above itself. There were some great players in it in the form of God, Sid and Platt. But there was a fair amount of dross too.
If Taylor had stayed on in 1990, he'd have probably still been in charge by the summer of 1991 too. And we'd have missed out on BFR. Ron's side played some of the best football most of us are ever likely to see at VP. I wouldn't swap those years for anything.
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See, that's where these kind of discussions can run aground.
That side in 1989/90 probably performed above itself. There were some great players in it in the form of God, Sid and Platt. But there was a fair amount of dross too.
If Taylor had stayed on in 1990, he'd have probably still been in charge by the summer of 1991 too. And we'd have missed out on BFR. Ron's side played some of the best football most of us are ever likely to see at VP. I wouldn't swap those years for anything.
I thought the football was pretty ordinary from that Taylor team, lots of defending and long ball stuff, it was very effective considering the resources he had. I agree that team achieved more than should have been expected.
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Playing 'that' side in the UEFA cup to preserve our chance of Champions League football was the beginning of the end for O'Neill.
I'm sure the next match was against Stoke and two up we threw away the lead in the last few minutes.
Including that game and the next seven, we amassed four point (4 draws, 4 defeats)
Had we of won, we'd have been eight points ahead of Arsenal with 11 games to go.
Ended up ten points behind and in sixth place.
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Ellis was the problem. End of.
Dave W summed it up perfectly.
Ellis ran the club like a corner shop and his own business.
Mind you the likes of Martin Edwards, Ken Bates etc were exactly the same. Had business success outside football but hopeless in it. In those days clubs just didnt want big debts, and when they did, it created mega problems. Think chelsea both before and during the Bates reign
Seem to recall Fergie saying Edwards was a stingy, short sighted owner. Fergie got lucky with the Utd kids which gave him more power and ultimately allowed him to control the club. We never had the continuity of manager because Ellis just kept sacking them!
Every manager we seemed to have just ran out of steam or patience with Ellis. Ie BFR, Little. As other have said GT managing England was a big turning point because I think he had the respect of Ellis like no other manager did. If he had stayed and built on the second place finish in 1990 it could have been so different.
Todays regime is just like death by a thousand cuts. Very painful
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Big Ron's greatest mistake was to persist with Saunders and Atkinson whilst ignoring Yorke.
The appointment of Stuart Gray, replacing Steve Harrison as Coach by John Gregory was a mistake as we were never the same team again.
Graham Taylor's biggest mistake was on his return to think he had time to evaluate the squad. Taking over in early February, he let the season fizzle out, only winning 3 games and it continued into the following season. Losing, like winning becomes a habit.
'Missed Opportunity' should be our club motto, such is the frequency we fail to take advantage of our position. It really is frustrating but has become the norm over the last 30 odd years.
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Really enjoyed reading that post by Dave W. Enjoyed it but it made me sad too, obviously.
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As individual moments, since I first had the money to start going regularly in 89-90.
Wonder what would have happened if we'd gone for Shearer when he went to Blackburn, instead of spending the same on Saunders and Houghton a month or so later, both as a "statement of intent" and improving that squad.
BFR rushing Dalian back instead of continuing with Yorke.
Another one who didn't want Collymore.
I remember being in the plant control room with a baggie and a doghead when the deal was announced, and them being shocked by the stream of profanities that followed. I was convinced he'd destroy the team spirit in the squad.
Gregory not going to Wycombe.
Somebody other than O'Leary who actually gave a shit. I could never work out why Ellis appointed a "cheque book" manager. Not exactly a recipe for a match made in heaven.
One of the lines from Mr W's post rang a bell about being happy to be the biggest Club in Birmingham.
I'm sure I remember a back page in the Mail, probably during the BFR period where we were described as the Manchester United of the Midlands, and thinking F&€# Off, I don't want to be the Manchester United of the Midlands, I want to be the Aston Villa of the world.
I've read a few suggestions for an alternative Club motto. Mine would be Scared to Suceed.
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A lot of the mistakes cited are just the way decisions were made; nobody knows how events would have turned out regardless of what happened and in the words of John Gregory, Hindsight United have never lost a match.
However, and this is something I could write a university thesis about because I said it then, I've said it ever since and when two or more who were present at the time get together they always say it. From Italia '90 until 2002, and in particular between the 1996 League Cup final and the 2000 FA Cup final, no club had the planets align to give them the opportunity to join the elite as often as Villa did. During the biggest boom period English football has ever known, a time when for the first time ever, the monied and literary classes were interested in football, we were the only show in town for a massive chunk of the country. From Manchester to London and from Ireland to the North Sea, there was no other club worth talking about and a whole generation of West Midlands children grew up only knowing the Villa locally in the Premier League. And all we were bothered about was being the biggest club in Birmingham. In 1994 we had the Republic's World Cup captain and their most popular player of all time - you couldn't buy a Villa shirt in Dublin. We had three Muslims in the first team when clubs were desperate to tap in to the UK Asian market - we did nothing to promote the fact. The south-west, then as now, is where Brummies emigrated. You'd struggle to buy a Villa shirt in Worcester, thirty miles away. One club had a visible presence in Birmingham city centre - Manchester Fucking United.
Other clubs were beginning to see the importance of proper media relations and marketing. When asked why we still didn't have a press officer, the master businessman said that we'd tried it before and the media always wanted to speak directly to him. That was thirty years earlier. We didn't have a database of supporters; season ticket holders would get a renewal form and that was it. No reminders, no follow-ups or attempts to get lapsed holders back. I worked harder on renewing H&V subscribers than the club did for season tickets. I could fill a book with the jaw-dropping idiocy they were coming up with at this time, but to give one example they were obsessed with unofficial merchandise - the biggest sales of Villa licensed gear outside Birmingham came from a shop at Merry Hill. The owner unwittingly stocked some counterfeit stuff once. Instead of having a quiet word Villa went in all guns blazing and took him to court, then wonder why he stopped selling their merchandise. Every other club of any size was becoming a supermarket, Villa were a corner shop. We were, as Hyder Jaward said in the Post, the first club to enter the twentieth century and the last big club to leave it.
As a result of this mentality, when Small Heath got promoted in 2002 they were making the headlines, they were seen as the progressive club of the city. We had a ten year start on them, they caught us up within weeks and thank God their inate Birmingham Cityness prevailed because otherwise we would have really been in trouble.
That was the time we could have joined the elite without splashing out; now a billionaire couldn't buy our place there.
Excellent post. What irks me though is that our billionaire chance came along and at a good time as well (before the investment at Manchester City and with the likes of Spurs, Everton and Liverpool not doing so well). The failure to capitalise on that opportunity and lay strong foundations on which the future of the club could be built meant that chance passed as well.
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Reading that post from Dave those who continually advocate the end of Lerner and a return to the glory days of Doug should really look at Doug's time a little more closely. Yes, mistakes have been made under Randy, yes have taken several steps backwards in attempt to reset the clock to a position where the club is sustainable financially, but the opportunties missed under Doug are simply endless. Dave mentions a key period, but almost every few years we had significant opportunities to really push on. I think I am correct in saying that Sir Graham put it best, and I am paraphrasing that Doug gave you enough to make you good, not to make you great.
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I still fail to understand why Randy didn't keep Steve Stride onboard.
At the very least, TSM would never have happened.
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I still fail to understand why Randy didn't keep Steve Stride onboard.
At the very least, TSM would never have happened.
Didn't he leave to take up a role at UEFA? It's not like Randy sacked him.
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That is an excellent post from Dave Woodhall.
It's easy to forget what life was like under Doug. We did have a few success stories with him Graham Taylor, Ron Atkinson and Brian Little and very nearly John Gregory. These little glimmers of hope do help erase the bad things from your memory from those years. One other thing to remember during the Doug Ellis years is Football was a completely different animal to what it is now.
I do wish MON was not appointed the role to take us into this new era under Randy. In hindsight he was the wrong man to give all that power too. When we got MON I was over the moon and I fell into the same trap as Randy probably did with the mighty flawless reputation he carried. What we really needed to do from the beginning of Randy's reign is a probably closer to the project Lambert is trying now. To try and build something to last. However we would have been able to add the extra bits of experience and quality as well.
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That is an excellent post from Dave Woodhall.
It's easy to forget what life was like under Doug. We did have a few success stories with him Graham Taylor, Ron Atkinson and Brian Little and very nearly John Gregory. These little glimmers of hope do help erase the bad things from your memory from those years. One other thing to remember during the Doug Ellis years is Football was a completely different animal to what it is now.
I do wish MON was not appointed the role to take us into this new era under Randy. In hindsight he was the wrong man to give all that power too. When we got MON I was over the moon and I fell into the same trap as Randy probably did with the mighty flawless reputation he carried. What we really needed to do from the beginning of Randy's reign is a probably closer to the project Lambert is trying now. To try and build something to last. However we would have been able to add the extra bits of experience and quality as well.
Which begs the question, with the benefit of hindsight, who should Randy have appointed as manager when he took over?
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Doug Ellis and Aston Villa, the summer of 1992.
Aston Villa and Man United had 7 league titles and 7 FA Cups, a European cup a piece and a smattering of league cups. They had a Cup Winners cup and we had a Super Cup. Both had grounds holding approximately 46,000.
The later of course had more hangers on, but more importantly, a board who understood which way the wind was blowing.
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A minor one:
In 2007 we spent £5.5m on a season long loan for Scott Carson and Zat Knight to have a back five of Carson, Mellberg, Laursen, Knight and Bouma, while Luke Young went to Boro for £2m.
The following season we spent £12m on Nicky Shorey, Luke Young and Brad Friedel to have a back five of Friedel, Young, Laursen, Knight, Shorey.
What if we'd just spent the money properly in 2007 to have a defence of Friedel, Young, Mellberg, Laursen, Bouma for that season (the first time we finished sixth under O'Neill)?
I don't think there would have been many better defences in the league. Rather than the usual "what if we'd bought Bent instead of Heskey" discussions, the above I think was the real missed opportunity.
2007 we brought in curtis davies too.
09/10 we bought dunne, collins, beye and warnock and did have one of the best defences in the league conceding only 39 goals.
we had the following defensive roster at one stage - friedel, young, beye, davies, dunne, collins, cuellar, warnock and shorey. all experienced pro's, well able to hold their own at their best but that weekly wage was collossal.
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A lot of the mistakes cited are just the way decisions were made; nobody knows how events would have turned out regardless of what happened and in the words of John Gregory, Hindsight United have never lost a match.
However, and this is something I could write a university thesis about because I said it then, I've said it ever since and when two or more who were present at the time get together they always say it. From Italia '90 until 2002, and in particular between the 1996 League Cup final and the 2000 FA Cup final, no club had the planets align to give them the opportunity to join the elite as often as Villa did. During the biggest boom period English football has ever known, a time when for the first time ever, the monied and literary classes were interested in football, we were the only show in town for a massive chunk of the country. From Manchester to London and from Ireland to the North Sea, there was no other club worth talking about and a whole generation of West Midlands children grew up only knowing the Villa locally in the Premier League. And all we were bothered about was being the biggest club in Birmingham. In 1994 we had the Republic's World Cup captain and their most popular player of all time - you couldn't buy a Villa shirt in Dublin. We had three Muslims in the first team when clubs were desperate to tap in to the UK Asian market - we did nothing to promote the fact. The south-west, then as now, is where Brummies emigrated. You'd struggle to buy a Villa shirt in Worcester, thirty miles away. One club had a visible presence in Birmingham city centre - Manchester Fucking United.
Other clubs were beginning to see the importance of proper media relations and marketing. When asked why we still didn't have a press officer, the master businessman said that we'd tried it before and the media always wanted to speak directly to him. That was thirty years earlier. We didn't have a database of supporters; season ticket holders would get a renewal form and that was it. No reminders, no follow-ups or attempts to get lapsed holders back. I worked harder on renewing H&V subscribers than the club did for season tickets. I could fill a book with the jaw-dropping idiocy they were coming up with at this time, but to give one example they were obsessed with unofficial merchandise - the biggest sales of Villa licensed gear outside Birmingham came from a shop at Merry Hill. The owner unwittingly stocked some counterfeit stuff once. Instead of having a quiet word Villa went in all guns blazing and took him to court, then wonder why he stopped selling their merchandise. Every other club of any size was becoming a supermarket, Villa were a corner shop. We were, as Hyder Jaward said in the Post, the first club to enter the twentieth century and the last big club to leave it.
As a result of this mentality, when Small Heath got promoted in 2002 they were making the headlines, they were seen as the progressive club of the city. We had a ten year start on them, they caught us up within weeks and thank God their inate Birmingham Cityness prevailed because otherwise we would have really been in trouble.
That was the time we could have joined the elite without splashing out; now a billionaire couldn't buy our place there.
This is spot on. Ellis went on for far too long.
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A lot of the mistakes cited are just the way decisions were made; nobody knows how events would have turned out regardless of what happened and in the words of John Gregory, Hindsight United have never lost a match.
However, and this is something I could write a university thesis about because I said it then, I've said it ever since and when two or more who were present at the time get together they always say it. From Italia '90 until 2002, and in particular between the 1996 League Cup final and the 2000 FA Cup final, no club had the planets align to give them the opportunity to join the elite as often as Villa did. During the biggest boom period English football has ever known, a time when for the first time ever, the monied and literary classes were interested in football, we were the only show in town for a massive chunk of the country. From Manchester to London and from Ireland to the North Sea, there was no other club worth talking about and a whole generation of West Midlands children grew up only knowing the Villa locally in the Premier League. And all we were bothered about was being the biggest club in Birmingham. In 1994 we had the Republic's World Cup captain and their most popular player of all time - you couldn't buy a Villa shirt in Dublin. We had three Muslims in the first team when clubs were desperate to tap in to the UK Asian market - we did nothing to promote the fact. The south-west, then as now, is where Brummies emigrated. You'd struggle to buy a Villa shirt in Worcester, thirty miles away. One club had a visible presence in Birmingham city centre - Manchester Fucking United.
Other clubs were beginning to see the importance of proper media relations and marketing. When asked why we still didn't have a press officer, the master businessman said that we'd tried it before and the media always wanted to speak directly to him. That was thirty years earlier. We didn't have a database of supporters; season ticket holders would get a renewal form and that was it. No reminders, no follow-ups or attempts to get lapsed holders back. I worked harder on renewing H&V subscribers than the club did for season tickets. I could fill a book with the jaw-dropping idiocy they were coming up with at this time, but to give one example they were obsessed with unofficial merchandise - the biggest sales of Villa licensed gear outside Birmingham came from a shop at Merry Hill. The owner unwittingly stocked some counterfeit stuff once. Instead of having a quiet word Villa went in all guns blazing and took him to court, then wonder why he stopped selling their merchandise. Every other club of any size was becoming a supermarket, Villa were a corner shop. We were, as Hyder Jaward said in the Post, the first club to enter the twentieth century and the last big club to leave it.
As a result of this mentality, when Small Heath got promoted in 2002 they were making the headlines, they were seen as the progressive club of the city. We had a ten year start on them, they caught us up within weeks and thank God their inate Birmingham Cityness prevailed because otherwise we would have really been in trouble.
That was the time we could have joined the elite without splashing out; now a billionaire couldn't buy our place there.
good post dave but Id leave the bit about the jerseys not being for sale in Dublin out of the thesis ;D I grew up in rural Ireland and proudly wore the Muller one (with Saunders on the back, he left a few weeks later) and the lovely navy blue one under Little. If the shirts were freely available in small towns throughout Ireland then Dublin should have been safe enough for one.
I suppose yorke leaving was kind of when we fell away from the coat tails of united but a number of things have always perplexed me about the villa.
ignoring the sheiks and the sky sports bubble
1. manchester a town of 512,000 supports two well established clubs, ditto liverpool with 466,000. Birmingham has the same population as both cities combined yet only really has the Villa. In terms of a traditional support base shouldnt Villa be creaming these 4 clubs for starters?
2. after the league winning season in 80/81, the club should have been able to go on and thrive. instead were relegated in 87. its before my time but that kind of collapse is surely unprecedented. what were the reasons?
3. its a common theme, come back up under taylor and come second. drop off the radar under venglos but back again under ron. 92/93 second when we should have won the league only to fall away totally the next.
4. finally under little it appeared we have cracked it, young progressive manager, good backroom staff, villa to the core. young team. look like they were going to do something but it just plateaued out for all involved.
5. by the end of MON's reign I think we knew by the final season it had run its course under him. I certainly felt that he had ran out of ideas by then.
why over successive era's can the club not build anything sustainable? club still has the raw ingredients to be a super power, the crowds we get to watch the most putrid football imaginable even today suggest we can be a lot better.
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A lot of the mistakes cited are just the way decisions were made; nobody knows how events would have turned out regardless of what happened and in the words of John Gregory, Hindsight United have never lost a match.
However, and this is something I could write a university thesis about because I said it then, I've said it ever since and when two or more who were present at the time get together they always say it. From Italia '90 until 2002, and in particular between the 1996 League Cup final and the 2000 FA Cup final, no club had the planets align to give them the opportunity to join the elite as often as Villa did. During the biggest boom period English football has ever known, a time when for the first time ever, the monied and literary classes were interested in football, we were the only show in town for a massive chunk of the country. From Manchester to London and from Ireland to the North Sea, there was no other club worth talking about and a whole generation of West Midlands children grew up only knowing the Villa locally in the Premier League. And all we were bothered about was being the biggest club in Birmingham. In 1994 we had the Republic's World Cup captain and their most popular player of all time - you couldn't buy a Villa shirt in Dublin. We had three Muslims in the first team when clubs were desperate to tap in to the UK Asian market - we did nothing to promote the fact. The south-west, then as now, is where Brummies emigrated. You'd struggle to buy a Villa shirt in Worcester, thirty miles away. One club had a visible presence in Birmingham city centre - Manchester Fucking United.
Other clubs were beginning to see the importance of proper media relations and marketing. When asked why we still didn't have a press officer, the master businessman said that we'd tried it before and the media always wanted to speak directly to him. That was thirty years earlier. We didn't have a database of supporters; season ticket holders would get a renewal form and that was it. No reminders, no follow-ups or attempts to get lapsed holders back. I worked harder on renewing H&V subscribers than the club did for season tickets. I could fill a book with the jaw-dropping idiocy they were coming up with at this time, but to give one example they were obsessed with unofficial merchandise - the biggest sales of Villa licensed gear outside Birmingham came from a shop at Merry Hill. The owner unwittingly stocked some counterfeit stuff once. Instead of having a quiet word Villa went in all guns blazing and took him to court, then wonder why he stopped selling their merchandise. Every other club of any size was becoming a supermarket, Villa were a corner shop. We were, as Hyder Jaward said in the Post, the first club to enter the twentieth century and the last big club to leave it.
As a result of this mentality, when Small Heath got promoted in 2002 they were making the headlines, they were seen as the progressive club of the city. We had a ten year start on them, they caught us up within weeks and thank God their inate Birmingham Cityness prevailed because otherwise we would have really been in trouble.
That was the time we could have joined the elite without splashing out; now a billionaire couldn't buy our place there.
Oh if I could have written that post. Spot on Dave. I boycotted Villa Park from 1998 to 2004 because of the old fool as I just couldn't stand to see my ticket money be so recklessly wasted by this parochial so called master businessman and his negligent running of the club at the time.
I've just about forgiven him, but forget it, never.
Agreed. We had chance after chance to really establish ourselves as giant club, but Ellis' arrogance and poor vision always got in the way, yet we were always being told by the likes of Gary Newbon that we were lucky under Ellis as our foundation was secure - which it was, but that was just it. We could never build on them. Yes it was great that Lerner came in and invested masses of money into the infrastructure and, initially the playing staff, but it came about fifteen years too late.
In fact, I seem to recall Newbon claiming he advised the board to rename the new Witton Lane Stand in Ellis' honour.
One thing Ellis always did was make sure he had the media onside. On his side, that is; by Doug Ellis, for the benefit of Doug Ellis. Randy & co have made some horrendous mistakes but I honestly believe that they want what's best for the Villa. Doug wanted what was best for him.
When Ellis first got involved football clubs were the status symbols and to some extent (self) publicity vehicles of moderately successful businessmen. Until the premiership moved on, generally what was good for Ellis and his ilk was good for the clubs they were associated with.
On this basis I think it's unfair to criticise Ellis and to somehow praise 'Randy & Co' for wanting what is best for AVFC.
Lerner comes across as an isolated, depressed business incompetent who doesn't know how to get out of the mess he's got himself into. Faulkner et al come across as paid staff who are doing their best but ultimately are doing a job and enhancing their CV.
The current day 'Randy & Co' and the out of date Ellis are exactly the same - out of their depth and incompetent - whether they have Villa's best interests at heart is immaterial.
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Not signing Juniniho under Gregory
This is one that always sticks out in my mind. Villa were top of the league when the possibility of signing this guy was rumoured (and negotiated if I remember rightly), and I feel this signing could have given us the fresh impetus needed to maintain our challenge.
Another big mistake I remember strongly was signing Heskey in 2008-09 when we should have signed Darren Bent.
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F&€# Off, I don't want to be the Manchester United of the Midlands, I want to be the Aston Villa of the world.
Yep!
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3. its a common theme, come back up under taylor and come second. drop off the radar under venglos but back again under ron. 92/93 second when we should have won the league only to fall away totally the next.
I'm sure Ron Atkinson, in one interview, listed the targets he identified to build on the runners up position in 92/93, then listed the players he had to 'settle for' (one of whom was Andy Townsend). Having said that it should be noted that Atkinson came close to winning the title a couple of times when he was at Man Utd but failed, so it could be argued that 2nd/3rd was the ceiling for his teams in the league.
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Great post Dave. It was a similar story in the 60's. The decade when footballers became film stars, as did some managers and European football added a new dimension to a game that suddenly became awash with money. It all passed us by then as well.
The team that won the cup were relegated two years later. We appointed a manager, Joe Mercer, who revamped the youth system whilst developing a first team good enough to get us promoted and push the country's top 6. It should have been a new dawn but it all went nipples up very quickly.
Joe went on to manage another club out of the second division and this time go on to win the league, league cup, fa cup and cup winners cup. It was an almost unique period of meritorious success in Manchester City's history. Meanwhile we missed the boat big time as we dropped down to the third division.
If only our supreme achievement of the 20th century had come a dozen years earlier or a dozen years later when football was thoroughly fashionable.
I think the truth is that there have been many times in the last 50 years when we have reached a fork in the road and some daemon or other has been there to give us a firm shove in the wrong direction. We are a big club, opportunity seemingly cannot help coming along every now and then. We've just never been big enough at the time to bite its hand off.
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We're starting to sound like Bloos fans now.
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3. its a common theme, come back up under taylor and come second. drop off the radar under venglos but back again under ron. 92/93 second when we should have won the league only to fall away totally the next.
I'm sure Ron Atkinson, in one interview, listed the targets he identified to build on the runners up position in 92/93, then listed the players he had to 'settle for' (one of whom was Andy Townsend). Having said that it should be noted that Atkinson came close to winning the title a couple of times when he was at Man Utd but failed, so it could be argued that 2nd/3rd was the ceiling for his teams in the league.
When you and Manchester United are going for a player, they've just won the league and the media are praising the beginning of a Thousand Year Reich, who's he going to join? As he also said, when we were in for Shearer our top player was on about £4k a week and Jack Walker's money meant Blackburn could offer him fifteen. Ron won cups with three clubs and just missed out on the title with three. That maybe says a lot about how he handles constant pressure as opposed to the one-offs.
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3. its a common theme, come back up under taylor and come second. drop off the radar under venglos but back again under ron. 92/93 second when we should have won the league only to fall away totally the next.
I'm sure Ron Atkinson, in one interview, listed the targets he identified to build on the runners up position in 92/93, then listed the players he had to 'settle for' (one of whom was Andy Townsend). Having said that it should be noted that Atkinson came close to winning the title a couple of times when he was at Man Utd but failed, so it could be argued that 2nd/3rd was the ceiling for his teams in the league.
Townsend was a bloody good player for us and we were all delighted to sign him at the time. I wish we could "settle for" players like him now.
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That is an excellent post from Dave Woodhall.
It's easy to forget what life was like under Doug. We did have a few success stories with him Graham Taylor, Ron Atkinson and Brian Little and very nearly John Gregory. These little glimmers of hope do help erase the bad things from your memory from those years. One other thing to remember during the Doug Ellis years is Football was a completely different animal to what it is now.
I do wish MON was not appointed the role to take us into this new era under Randy. In hindsight he was the wrong man to give all that power too. When we got MON I was over the moon and I fell into the same trap as Randy probably did with the mighty flawless reputation he carried. What we really needed to do from the beginning of Randy's reign is a probably closer to the project Lambert is trying now. To try and build something to last. However we would have been able to add the extra bits of experience and quality as well.
Which begs the question, with the benefit of hindsight, who should Randy have appointed as manager when he took over?
I remember the excitement on the evening when it was announced that O'Neill had been appointed. I don't think many of the supporters congregated on the North Stand car park would have argued with that decision at the time.
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I said on here that O'Neill wasn't the great saviour he was held up as, and in one of my very rare accurate predictions I said he'd get us top six but not top four. There wasn't much point in not joining in with the general feeling, though.
Incidentally, does anyone remember the Nicholas Padfield bid and who they were going to bring in as manager?
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I said on here that O'Neill wasn't the great saviour he was held up as, and in one of my very rare accurate predictions I said he'd get us top six but not top four. There wasn't much point in not joining in with the general feeling, though.
Incidentally, does anyone remember the Nicholas Padfield bid and who they were going to bring in as manager?
Was this the chap who was going to bring in Klinnsman?
Probably wrong, but, I do remember Klinnsman being mentioned.
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That is an excellent post from Dave Woodhall.
It's easy to forget what life was like under Doug. We did have a few success stories with him Graham Taylor, Ron Atkinson and Brian Little and very nearly John Gregory. These little glimmers of hope do help erase the bad things from your memory from those years. One other thing to remember during the Doug Ellis years is Football was a completely different animal to what it is now.
I do wish MON was not appointed the role to take us into this new era under Randy. In hindsight he was the wrong man to give all that power too. When we got MON I was over the moon and I fell into the same trap as Randy probably did with the mighty flawless reputation he carried. What we really needed to do from the beginning of Randy's reign is a probably closer to the project Lambert is trying now. To try and build something to last. However we would have been able to add the extra bits of experience and quality as well.
Which begs the question, with the benefit of hindsight, who should Randy have appointed as manager when he took over?
Bugger if I knows! Nowadays, outside the realms of Villa my awareness of football is very limited. I was extremely excited with the appointment originally but when you look back on the money spent and wasted it is disappointing.
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Laudrup.
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I know it has been mentioned before but our biggest mistake of recent times was Randy not appointing an advisor at the time of taking over - someone who had experience of managing or owning a football club at the top level. The beautiful game is littered with chancers and sharks and it still irks me that at the time of our biggest ever take over and impetus of serious cash injection we gave free reign to MON - The manchester united manager in waiting.
A glorious opportunity was wasted and the shock waves are still being felt now
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Slightly away from the OP, but would the Villa be as much of a lucrative prospect to buy as we think it would? We have a fantastic stadium and training facilities but unless we had an owner that would be actively trying to sell I think there are other clubs out there who may attract more interest. In terms of the attendance, we have a huge fanbase but that doesn't necessarily translate to gate receipts for a prospective owner. I'm pretty sure we're 8th in attendance league table, sat below Sunderland who had a higher average attendance than us this year despite having been bottom for pretty much the whole season. Not to mention the fact that there are clubs like Newcastle who have fanatical support and a bigger stadium, West Ham who are based in London and will be getting a glistening new stadium to move into etc. Having said all of that I don't think I'd want a Red Rom or Sheikh (or even worse, a Vincent Tan) coming in, I'd never want to go to a game expecting to win 4 or 5 and being pissed off at anything less.
As has been ponted out, I think Moscow was the big one that I can remember in my 15 years of going to the Villa. That was absolutely criminal. Of course, he could have sent his best team and had the same result but if we had progressed to even the final I believe we would have built from there and be on a par with (if not above) Everton now. Having said that, I don't think we'd have broken the top 4 since then no matter what happened due to the ineptitude of Faulkner, Lerner et al.
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Laudrup.
Is the one.
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Laudrup.
Is the one.
At the time he had "only" managed for 4 years as manager of Brøndby, winning one league championship and 3 Danish cups. His time at Brøndby was most noticeable for his culling of senior high wage players and introducing some younger home grown players. I think he'd have been a bit of a risk at that point, but fast forward to the removal of Houllier and he would have been just what the doctor ordered.
Ego large enough to cope with the expectations of the job.
Achieved enough in the game to command some respect within the squad.
A progressive approach to the game which would have followed on from the direction Houllier had started to take us in.
A track record by then of repeating what he'd done at Brøndby with bringing younger players through - whatever he achieves in future, keeping Mallorca up in 2005/06 will be one of his best achievements.
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Aside from Moyes -who was the popular choice back then, I did mention Laudrup as one to look at in 2010. Part of the reason for that was his willingness to take the job previously.
But after Brondby, he developed a reputation for only staying with clubs for less than 12 months. There was also a suggestion that he was offered the Blackburn job and had insisted on a release clause allowing him to move to Spain should one of the La Liga clubs come in for him.
Swansea look like a good, progressive outfit. But in fairness, he has benefited from the good work that occurred there previously. You'd have to wonder what he would have made of players like NRC, Sidwell, Dunne and Collins though, blokes who had some very admirable qualities but who could trap a ball further than most mere mortals can kick it.
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Aside from Moyes -who was the popular choice back then, I did mention Laudrup as one to look at in 2010. Part of the reason for that was his willingness to take the job previously.
But after Brondby, he developed a reputation for only staying with clubs for less than 12 months. There was also a suggestion that he was offered the Blackburn job and had insisted on a release clause allowing him to move to Spain should one of the La Liga clubs come in for him.
Swansea look like a good, progressive outfit. But in fairness, he has benefited from the good work that occurred there previously. You'd have to wonder what he would have made of players like NRC, Sidwell, Dunne and Collins though, blokes who had some very admirable qualities but who could trap a ball further than most mere mortals can kick it.
This was my point on another thread about Swansea, they are a club who has adopted a footballing style that stays regardless of the manager. It's the way to run a football club because it makes appointing managers a lot easier and also you don't tend to need a mass exodus of players every time a new man comes in.
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They look toothless up front to me. I am not sure if that is progressive.
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Aye, you could say similar about the Olbiyun, for all their many faults. Naturally I hope this season proves to be a fridge to far and they crash and burn.
A DoF or similar with a young coach definitely has merit, particularly when you consider the naivety and lack of experience RL and Faulkner seem so keen to demonstrate again and again.
The exception to going that route would be if someone like Moyes becomes available - not completely out of the question, considering Yanited's current travails.
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They're largely toothless upfront because their primary goalscorer is out injured.
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Aside from Moyes -who was the popular choice back then, I did mention Laudrup as one to look at in 2010. Part of the reason for that was his willingness to take the job previously.
But after Brondby, he developed a reputation for only staying with clubs for less than 12 months. There was also a suggestion that he was offered the Blackburn job and had insisted on a release clause allowing him to move to Spain should one of the La Liga clubs come in for him.
Swansea look like a good, progressive outfit. But in fairness, he has benefited from the good work that occurred there previously. You'd have to wonder what he would have made of players like NRC, Sidwell, Dunne and Collins though, blokes who had some very admirable qualities but who could trap a ball further than most mere mortals can kick it.
This was my point on another thread about Swansea, they are a club who has adopted a footballing style that stays regardless of the manager. It's the way to run a football club because it makes appointing managers a lot easier and also you don't tend to need a mass exodus of players every time a new man comes in.
I believe it's a somewhat similar set up in Lyon. Each signing is made by a committee consisting of the chairman/DoF, other high ranking board members, coaches, scouts and of course the manager (or head coach as it is in this system, similar to Albion). Would be great to have something similar where there was an ethos throughout the club and have everyone pulling in the same direction.
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They're largely toothless upfront because their primary goalscorer is out injured.
They spent £12 million on Bony. Maybe Lambert knows a better striker when he sees one?
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Aside from Moyes -who was the popular choice back then, I did mention Laudrup as one to look at in 2010. Part of the reason for that was his willingness to take the job previously.
But after Brondby, he developed a reputation for only staying with clubs for less than 12 months. There was also a suggestion that he was offered the Blackburn job and had insisted on a release clause allowing him to move to Spain should one of the La Liga clubs come in for him.
Swansea look like a good, progressive outfit. But in fairness, he has benefited from the good work that occurred there previously. You'd have to wonder what he would have made of players like NRC, Sidwell, Dunne and Collins though, blokes who had some very admirable qualities but who could trap a ball further than most mere mortals can kick it.
This was my point on another thread about Swansea, they are a club who has adopted a footballing style that stays regardless of the manager. It's the way to run a football club because it makes appointing managers a lot easier and also you don't tend to need a mass exodus of players every time a new man comes in.
I believe it's a somewhat similar set up in Lyon. Each signing is made by a committee consisting of the chairman/DoF, other high ranking board members, coaches, scouts and of course the manager (or head coach as it is in this system, similar to Albion). Would be great to have something similar where there was an ethos throughout the club and have everyone pulling in the same direction.
I think you can build a club up that way, but is it right to get them truely successful? If you look at the top managers, they'd want total control and it's these managers that win the trophies.
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Not buying Gazza in 1995.
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Watching Swansea against Manure the other day was like pulling teeth. It was shocking how much of the ball they had and they barely created anything. I'm sure at one point they passed it about 50 times then it ended up back with Williams who hoofed it to no one.
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Not buying Gazza in 1995.
Bullet dodged, in my opinion.
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Great subject and there has been plenty over the years, but in my lifetime it was when BFR brought back Dalian into the team in the run in to the 93 season. Yorke and Saunders were really getting a partnership going, and BFR moved Yorke to the wing upsetting the team. Its all ifs and buts, but we had such momentum at the time is was only ours to lose.....and we bloody did.
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They're largely toothless upfront because their primary goalscorer is out injured.
They spent £12 million on Bony. Maybe Lambert knows a better striker when he sees one?
Bony is starting to score goals now, it's taken him time to settle and he was injured for a while.
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They look toothless up front to me. I am not sure if that is progressive.
Bet you would swop places with them?
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They look toothless up front to me. I am not sure if that is progressive.
Bet you would swop places with them?
I doubt it right now as they're below us. However in comparison the trajectory of the two clubs in the last 5 years is quite telling.
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They look toothless up front to me. I am not sure if that is progressive.
Bet you would swop places with them?
I doubt it right now as they're below us. However in comparison the trajectory of the two clubs in the last 5 years is quite telling.
True
They have a trophy in the bank, progressive manager and a decent squad. The europa league and Michu being injured has kiiled them in the prem this year
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I cannot be arsed to do the post in full. However, as an extension to Woodhall's well received views, our failure to take control of the M5 corridor has always been one of my greatest irritations with how we are run.
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Justin Edinburgh clearing off the line - was it over? - and the 6 minutes of injury time at Hillsborough.
Was that even on the same day? That's how I remember it.
Not beating a shite Coventry side on the day of the Fergie time 6 minutes at Manure. I distinctly recall Leigh Jenkinson time wasting down the the tunnel - should have been kicked into row Z.
Not competing in the 1995-6 FA Cup semi at Manure.
Not picking the form team in the 1999 FA Cup final, but JG's old favourites.
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I cannot be arsed to do the post in full. However, as an extension to Woodhall's well received views, our failure to take control of the M5 corridor has always been one of my greatest irritations with how we are run.
When I lived in the remote north west, where there was no local league team, everyone just picked or inherited One of the Manchester or Liverpool clubs or Newcastle. It was always irritating to me that they contributed to filling those grounds and when I came home there were always swathes of seats at Villa Park. Considering how long we were the only premiership club in Birmingham and a huge surrounding area including Worcester, Cheltenham, Telford, Warwick, Nuneaton, Rugby, and many other big towns, it was poor.
To echo Dave's point, the final thing that used to piss me off was seeing the United section in JJB with just a few Villa and Nose shirts. I would honestly rather my son supported Small Heath than United. And I hate SHA as much as the rest.
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They look toothless up front to me. I am not sure if that is progressive.
Bet you would swop places with them?
No.
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Swansea have suffered because of europa league really, not in that and I'd say they'd have another 4-5 points on the board and by closer to Saints and Newcastle in the league.
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Are you saying ff they weren't in the Europa League then they would actually have done something with the 99% of possession they had against us?
In ten years time, Aston Villa will still be one of the biggest clubs in England, playing in the top flight. Swansea will have been relegated by then.
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Justin Edinburgh clearing off the line - was it over? - and the 6 minutes of injury time at Hillsborough.
Was that even on the same day? That's how I remember it.
Edinburghs was a mid week game, Fergie time the 1st was at Old Trafford.
Agreed though, two huge moments.
Agreed. Was the Manu Sheff Wed game the same day when Dalian smashed it over the bar against Cov to surrender our place at the top?
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No we drew 2-2 with Arsenal the day Yanited were given the "play till you score" extra time.
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No we drew 2-2 with Arsenal the day Yanited were given the "play till you score" extra time.
No, it was the Coventry nil-nil.
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No we drew 2-2 with Arsenal the day Yanited were given the "play till you score" extra time.
No, it was the Coventry nil-nil.
It was definately Coventry nil-nil. Didn't we beat Arsenal 1-0 home and away that season? Tony Daley at their place and a Saunders penalty at home?
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Correct, a Tony Daley rare header IIRC at Higbury.
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Correct, a Tony Daley rare header IIRC at Higbury.
You do I believe.
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Those were the days. Travelling back from Highbury for the second time in three years thinking we would win the league.
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No we drew 2-2 with Arsenal the day Yanited were given the "play till you score" extra time.
No, it was the Coventry nil-nil.
What am I thinking of then? Was there a 2-2 with Arsenal? Have I gone mad?
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No we drew 2-2 with Arsenal the day Yanited were given the "play till you score" extra time.
No, it was the Coventry nil-nil.
What am I thinking of then? Was there a 2-2 with Arsenal? Have I gone mad?
Maybe the one in 1996-97 when we were two up and drew after they equalised just before midnight?
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The only 2-2 games I can remember during 90s v Arse, were:
VP when Lee Dixon got a late leveler after Savo put us 2 up
Another at the Library when Savo equalized
And the league cup semi
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Could be.
I reemember us coming from 2 down in the semi-final in 96. I don't know. Madness is the only reasonable answer.
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Reading Mr Woodhall's post, I wonder where we'd be in this league if we had capitalised on what we had:-
Top fifteen bestselling UK football teams (by merchandise sales) of all time on Amazon.co.uk:
1. Manchester United
2. Chelsea
3. Liverpool
4. Arsenal
5. Tottenham Hotspur
6. West Ham
7. Leeds United
8. Manchester City
9. Newcastle United
10. Aston Villa
11. Everton
12. Sunderland
13. Queens Park Rangers
14. Nottingham Forest
15. West Bromwich Albion
Source:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2539840/Manchester-United-Amazon-uk-club-merchandise-rankings.html
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Reading Mr Woodhall's post, I wonder where we'd be in this league if we had capitalised on what we had:-
Top fifteen bestselling UK football teams (by merchandise sales) of all time on Amazon.co.uk:
1. Manchester United
2. Chelsea
3. Liverpool
4. Arsenal
5. Tottenham Hotspur
6. West Ham
7. Leeds United
8. Manchester City
9. Newcastle United
10. Aston Villa
11. Everton
12. Sunderland
13. Queens Park Rangers
14. Nottingham Forest
15. West Bromwich Albion
Source:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2539840/Manchester-United-Amazon-uk-club-merchandise-rankings.html
You just know that all over Smethwick, Stripeys are frantically committing that list to memory so they can reel off a list of clubs wot am bigga then the Villa.
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Surprised at Everton's position in that list and West Ham's.
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Surprised at Everton's position in that list and West Ham's.
I'm not at West Ham's. Think how many tourists go to London.
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I'm sure I read in a book( could have been one of yours Dave) that we played Arsenal in a cup game and who ever lost there manager was going and both teams were going after the same manager. We won and Arsenal brought George Graham in, we stuck with Turner :(
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Signing Cascariono instead of Sheringham.
Not paying the extra 250k Wolves wanted for us to buy Robbie Keane then selling Oakes to Wolves a month later for 250k.
Buying utter tossers like Steve Hodge and (I didn't know where Bham was)Unsworth.
The desperate Odreary days !!!!
Plenty of missed chances and mistakes but still Love the Villa !!!
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Surprised at Everton's position in that list and West Ham's.
I'm not at West Ham's. Think how many tourists go to London.
QPR? WTF?
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Surprised at Everton's position in that list and West Ham's.
I'm not at West Ham's. Think how many tourists go to London.
QPR? WTF?
Just read the article and Napoli are ahead of Barcelona etc ..... really??
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I'm sure I read in a book( could have been one of yours Dave) that we played Arsenal in a cup game and who ever lost there manager was going and both teams were going after the same manager. We won and Arsenal brought George Graham in, we stuck with Turner :(
It wasn't as clear-cut as that but it was the League Cup quarter final replay 1986. We won at Highbury and afterwards Turner was asked if he would have been sacked had we lost; his denial was about the least convincing you could imagine. Don Howe left Arsenal a few weeks later and it doesn't take much to imagine us sacking Turner if we'd lost and going for Graham.
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I'm sure I read in a book( could have been one of yours Dave) that we played Arsenal in a cup game and who ever lost there manager was going and both teams were going after the same manager. We won and Arsenal brought George Graham in, we stuck with Turner :(
It wasn't as clear-cut as that but it was the League Cup quarter final replay 1986. We won at Highbury and afterwards Turner was asked if he would have been sacked had we lost; his denial was about the least convincing you could imagine. Don Howe left Arsenal a few weeks later and it doesn't take much to imagine us sacking Turner if we'd lost and going for Graham.
The Arse appointed a caretaker to the end of the season didn't they and ended up top half? We escaped relegation
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I'm sure I read in a book( could have been one of yours Dave) that we played Arsenal in a cup game and who ever lost there manager was going and both teams were going after the same manager. We won and Arsenal brought George Graham in, we stuck with Turner :(
It wasn't as clear-cut as that but it was the League Cup quarter final replay 1986. We won at Highbury and afterwards Turner was asked if he would have been sacked had we lost; his denial was about the least convincing you could imagine. Don Howe left Arsenal a few weeks later and it doesn't take much to imagine us sacking Turner if we'd lost and going for Graham.
The Arse appointed a caretaker to the end of the season didn't they and ended up top half? We escaped relegation
Steve Burtenshaw. Then Graham took over and the rest is history.
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I'm sure I read in a book( could have been one of yours Dave) that we played Arsenal in a cup game and who ever lost there manager was going and both teams were going after the same manager. We won and Arsenal brought George Graham in, we stuck with Turner :(
It wasn't as clear-cut as that but it was the League Cup quarter final replay 1986. We won at Highbury and afterwards Turner was asked if he would have been sacked had we lost; his denial was about the least convincing you could imagine. Don Howe left Arsenal a few weeks later and it doesn't take much to imagine us sacking Turner if we'd lost and going for Graham.
Didn't Turner say he was 5 minutes from the sack in an ill tempered FA Cup tie v Pompey. Was that earlier that season? Stainrod wound them up and one of them kicked him. Birch or Kerr got a late equaliser.
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I'm sure I read in a book( could have been one of yours Dave) that we played Arsenal in a cup game and who ever lost there manager was going and both teams were going after the same manager. We won and Arsenal brought George Graham in, we stuck with Turner :(
It wasn't as clear-cut as that but it was the League Cup quarter final replay 1986. We won at Highbury and afterwards Turner was asked if he would have been sacked had we lost; his denial was about the least convincing you could imagine. Don Howe left Arsenal a few weeks later and it doesn't take much to imagine us sacking Turner if we'd lost and going for Graham.
Didn't Turner say he was 5 minutes from the sack in an ill tempered FA Cup tie v Pompey. Was that earlier that season? Stainrod wound them up and one of them kicked him. Birch or Kerr got a late equaliser.
Same season. It pissed down and we got a late equaliser.
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I'm sure I read in a book( could have been one of yours Dave) that we played Arsenal in a cup game and who ever lost there manager was going and both teams were going after the same manager. We won and Arsenal brought George Graham in, we stuck with Turner :(
It wasn't as clear-cut as that but it was the League Cup quarter final replay 1986. We won at Highbury and afterwards Turner was asked if he would have been sacked had we lost; his denial was about the least convincing you could imagine. Don Howe left Arsenal a few weeks later and it doesn't take much to imagine us sacking Turner if we'd lost and going for Graham.
Wasn't it Barry Davies?
"If you had lost the game would you have lost your job"?
"No".
"Are you sure"?
"No".
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Typical Villa as well, beat Arsenal away and then get knocked out - over two legs!!- by Oxford United of all people in the next round!!
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With QPR in the final.
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With QPR in the final.
Yes, I'd forgotten about that, just makes it even worse!
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With QPR in the final.
Yes, I'd forgotten about that, just makes it even worse!
Yep - never convinced we would have beaten Liverpool in 1984 (had we got past Everton) as they were very strong but I have little doubt we would have turned over Rangers who were awful that day.
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Signing Cascariono instead of Sheringham.
Not paying the extra 250k Wolves wanted for us to buy Robbie Keane then selling Oakes to Wolves a month later for 250k.
Buying utter tossers like Steve Hodge and (I didn't know where Bham was)Unsworth.
The desperate Odreary days !!!!
I am sure when i read JG's book he said he did not want Keane.
Plenty of missed chances and mistakes but still Love the Villa !!!
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Typical Villa as well, beat Arsenal away and then get knocked out - over two legs!!- by Oxford United of all people in the next round!!
That away leg was one of the crappest games I have ever been to, not helped by the plebs we took that day.
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I'm sure I read in a book( could have been one of yours Dave) that we played Arsenal in a cup game and who ever lost there manager was going and both teams were going after the same manager. We won and Arsenal brought George Graham in, we stuck with Turner :(
It wasn't as clear-cut as that but it was the League Cup quarter final replay 1986. We won at Highbury and afterwards Turner was asked if he would have been sacked had we lost; his denial was about the least convincing you could imagine. Don Howe left Arsenal a few weeks later and it doesn't take much to imagine us sacking Turner if we'd lost and going for Graham.
Didn't Turner say he was 5 minutes from the sack in an ill tempered FA Cup tie v Pompey. Was that earlier that season? Stainrod wound them up and one of them kicked him. Birch or Kerr got a late equaliser.
Same season. It pissed down and we got a late equaliser.
Didn't go to that game,but remember watching atv or bbc the night after.If I remember correctly Turner had a big black leather SS trench coat on and the rain on his face could have almost been tears.
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Typical Villa as well, beat Arsenal away and then get knocked out - over two legs!!- by Oxford United of all people in the next round!!
That away leg was one of the crappest games I have ever been to, not helped by the plebs we took that day.
The fans or the team ?
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Typical Villa as well, beat Arsenal away and then get knocked out - over two legs!!- by Oxford United of all people in the next round!!
That away leg was one of the crappest games I have ever been to, not helped by the plebs we took that day.
The fans or the team ?
Or the police officers?