The greatest period of untapped attacking ability? Between 01 and 02?

[supertom]

We've had so many nearly moments it's untrue.

Between 1995-2002.... we could have achieved so much. We were consistently top eight those years and made two finals. Would have been great to get in ahead of the new money clubs like Chelsea and City.

Its frustrating. We were often a signing or two from really pushing up a level. Sometimes we made the wrong signing, like Curcic or SVC, and others Doug put his hand in his pocket 6 months after the moment had gone.

Obviously in recent times the best example of a missed opportunity was not signing Bent a year or two earlier. Signing Heskey was a joke. Likewise the Jan window when we only signed Routledge was also a missed opportunity. We'd been playing great football, we were pushing for top four. A couple of good signings to give us more depth and who knows. Generally we're a club that when we're going well we're decent for the first two thirds of a season, but then it goes tits up and falls apart when we run out of legs, or people just work out how to stop us, because under certain managers we've been fairly one note, particularly JG and MON. O Leary too. He struggled initially, then had an excellent 2004, finishing one season very well, and starting the next one very well. We've never particularly done plan B's very well.

Arsenal are now feeling this too. A couple of top signings and they'll be pushing for the title again.

[Damo70]

I reckon Doug is an adviser to the Arsenal board. 'Never listen to a manager. He will always tell you he is just two signings away from having a great team'.

[eamonn]

Just watching an old highlight vid for the game against Southampton in 2001. Some really brilliant goals. But it just made me remember a period in time for our club when we had a wealth of fantastic attacking ability, and in many cases we never saw the best of those players. In fact despite some of the players Gregory signed, he was never known as a very attack orientated manager.

We had a squad which had:
Ginola
Hadji
Merson
Hendrie
Angel
Vassell

Among others.
Even on top of that, we had Dion Dublin and Tayls too, who were both reliable. Barry was breaking through too.
We had some good defenders at the back too, and good keepers around that period.

I know JG is generally quite popular, and in a couple of his seasons we spent a fair chunk of time in the heady heights at the top of the league before faltering but should we not have been doing better with such talent? Could you imagine if he'd have got the most out of all the technically gifted attacking players at our disposal. In particular it's frustrating that Ginola and Hadji never produced anywhere close to their best form.

The start of 2001/02 was a really interesting time. Vassell was bursting to prominence, JPA had had his nightmare first six months but was now ready to get going and new signings like Mellberg, Hadji, Balaban and Hassan Kachloul (who started that season really well) promised much. JPA and Hendrie clearly had an understanding which, for whatever reason, only fleetingly caught fire. We looked very exciting in an early home game against ManUre. Vassell looked to have won us the points only for a last-gasp Alpay OG. Honest to God, how many nearly-stories against United have we had since we last beat them at home?

We also looked great in that game at Southampton you mentioned and three days before 9/11 we beat Liverpool 3-1 at Anfield when George Boateng was nearly assassinated by Stevie Me. I think we had only lost once in the league going into November when we got hammered up at Newcastle but there were warning signs. After breaking our backs to finally "win" the Intertoto, we exited in the first round of the UEFA to Varteks. We dipped a bit then (I think Sheff Wed knocked us out of the League Cup at VP in one of Bosko's rare starts), 2-0 up at Highbury and...yeah. An awful defeat at Derby just before Xmas when our old paramour Benni Carbone scored just to rub it in. The fucker would do it again with another club, Middlesboro, a few months later. Ego Ehiogu grabbing the winner to rub salt.

2002 began and we're 2-0 up against United in the Cup and...yeah.
Then Gregory suddenly baled shortly after (was this the season of his "Doug is in a timewarp...just gimme the money for Muzzy Izzet dammit!" comments in the Sunday Times or was that the previous winter when the pound sign protests came out?). Ironically Grecian left after back to back wins, shortly after a fine Monday night performance at Charlton.

Two boring as fuck scoreless draws with Messrs Deehan and Gray in interim charge before SGT came in and a strange season got stranger. We signed Peter Crouch on Deadline Day (in March, kids) and eventually finished 8th with a fine last-day win at Chelsea but there was a fair amount of inept displays before then like a horrible performance at Blackburn with SGT fuming about the lack of effort from the players.

He never really took to Angel or Ginola (not sure if Daveed featured at all under him) and Hendrie nearly committed career kamikaze by claiming to be too tired to play shortly after SGT coming in. This helped Tommy Hitz get his chance. George the legend Boateng began getting ideas above his station with the World Cup on the horizon and one of his last acts in a Villa shirt was throwing a Leicester player's boot over Filbert Street (Savage's probably...in fact it could have been the game when Cabbage got into trouble for poohing in the referee's toilet). Darius went to the World Cup, the legend went where a lot of ours tended to go at the time - Middlesboro, and Sir Graham braced himself for one more season in the rough and tumble of the modern Preemier League.   

[LeeB]

I think it was Paul Dikovs' boot, and remains one of my favourite random Villa things to this day

[curiousorange]

I read Gregory's book not long ago and one thing that comes across quite strongly is how much he second guessed himself. It was once said of Gregory that if he was made of chocolate he'd have eaten himself, but he'd got a top, top job at Villa and it seems he was never really confident about keeping hold of the position. I guess that's why he played safe, but 1998 was a brilliant time to be a Villa fan and it really did feel like we were one of the most exciting teams in the league. Don't forget this was leading up to United being treble winners and Arsenal doing a double, but there was a bunfight for the steps below, and Villa should have been a regular part of that. Look at the kind of teams that reached cup finals in those years: Newcastle, Tranmere, Leicester, a poor Spuds. Even Liverpool managed a mutant treble in 2001 with Heskey in their team...to think we managed one cup final in the Gregory years is appalling.

Gregory had shot it by 2001-2. Ellis knew any cash he was going to spend after the turn of the millennium was throwing good money after bad. You can pay a hefty fee for a talent like Merson, but somebody saw us coming with Stone, Watson et al. I guess he reasoned that if we hadn't done it by now, we weren't going to under JG.

[dave.woodhall]

They may have been poles apart in every other way but Gregory had two things in common with Tony Barton. Their initial success obscured the fact that they were both inexperienced at management, and Doug wanted rid of them. They could both have done with an experienced number two, but to ask for one would have been seen as tantamount to admitting they weren't up to the job. The bottom line with both of them is that everything they did after a certain period (with Gregory probably the cup final, with Barton the minute Doug returned) was to minimise the possibility of being sacked.

[Salsa Party Animal]

It will be interesting if we had a Paul Lambert type managing this team. Don't forget Noberto Solano as well (Not sure what year) Aston Villa main problem is they have 3 very good out 4 (Goalkeeper/Defence/Midfield/Attack) so when we nearly won the title we didn't have strong enough attack. We had all 4 but not the manager.