25 years ago

[Chico Hamilton III]

Dismal, very dismal.

And just in case anyone's hatred of Hodge was beginning to wane......


Villa the plaything of steely Gunners    

By TONY FRANCIS 
30 November 1986
The Sunday Times

Aston Villa ........... 0 Arsenal ............... 4 

SHOW me a more effective team and we will call off the championship right now. Arsenal are mean and in the mood. 

One thing is clear, though - you can't hope to beat the side with the stingiest defence in the country by playing five men at the back yourself. Aston Villa somehow contrived to miss the point. Their myopia cleared with the fog around half time but by then it was far too late. 

They had quite simply been processed: squeezes and kneaded into a tasty little dish before being swallowed whole in the second half. If the method sounds vaguely familiar, look no further back than 1971-72. George Graham could well be the ghost of Arsenal past. 

The futility of trying to break down a magnificient back line with barn door tactics was soon evident. Hitting hopeful aerial passes towards Thompson and little Daley was like trying to pick a lock with a length of wet string. Arsenal absorbed it all with consummate ease. 

Not that it was pretty. Heaven forbid that Graham should raid his homeland for hard cases as he has promised to do. Arsenal have quite enough steel already. 

When fortune smiled, as it did in the 21st minute, Arsenal accepted gratefully. Young Martin Hayes swung his foot from 15 yards. Sprink crouched to collect but stood helplessly as the ball struck Keown's boot and sailed over his head. 

You sensed it was as good as over. How were Aston Villa ever going to score against a team conceding less than half a goal a game this season? They could have done with Hodge at his best. Alas he spent large parts of the afternoon running into offside positions and blaming the linesmen for it. Apart from one lovely swivel and cross which Thompson's dive narrowly failed to convert into a goal, Hodge and his colleagues were invisible. 

Billy McNeill at last pushed Keown forward out of his overcrowded defence and introduced Walters to inject more guile. It mattered not. Once Hayes had incrased Arsenal's lead, courtesy of an arm and a post, they were swaggering. 

Davis, he of the lovely left foot, curled a free kick on to Gorves' ginger head of the third. The fourth was curiously out of context with such a clinical performance. Rocastle eluded Dorigo with a sudden change of pace, shaped to find Quinn but instead beat Spink with the outside of his right foot. 

In the last three visits to Villa Park Arsenal's scoring goes like this: 6, 4, 4. Ian Botham would be happy with comparable figures. 

Weather: foggy and cold. Ground: good. 

Goals: Hayes (21 min) 0-1; Hayes (60 min) 0-2; Groves (70 min) 0-3; Rocastle (83 min) 0-4. 

Aston Villa (5-3-2): Spink; Williams, Evans, Elliott, Keown, Dorigo; Daley, Norton, Hodge; Thompson, Kerr (sub Walters 45 min). 

Arsenal (4-4-2); Lukic; Anderson, O'Leary, Adams, Sansom; Rocastle, Williams, Davis, Hayes; Quinn, Groves. 

[andyaston]

That was the first game I ever saw Villa lose. We were awful and only about 21.000 turned up. It was cold and grim my dad put me out of my misery when the fourth went in and took us back to his car to beat the traffic.

[Pat McMahon]

I travelled back to Brum from london for that game and it was just pure misery. We were awful ,we had little flair, we had no belief and the slide felt unstopable. There were some decent individuals in that team but we were really poor as a unit. Probably my darkest season as a Villa fan - I don't think I have a single happy memory from the whole campaign.

[The Left Side]

One of my early games and truly miserable, my only memory was Andy Gray was on the programme cover!

[Damo70]

Tony Francis prediction of Arsenal finishing top was wrong though. They came fourth. If he had predicted Villa to finish bottom however.....