Mistakes and missed opportunities

[eamonn]

Really enjoyed reading that post by Dave W. Enjoyed it but it made me sad too, obviously.

[Villa in Denmark]

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.

[tomd2103]

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.

[Toronto Villa]

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.

[big 1st serve]

 I still fail to understand why Randy didn't keep Steve Stride onboard.
 At the very least, TSM would never have happened.

[Ad@m]

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.

[Ian.]

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.

[Damo70]

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?

[Ads]

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. 

[brontebilly]

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.

[oldhill_avfc]

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.

[brontebilly]

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  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.

[oldhill_avfc]

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.

[not3bad]

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.

[not3bad]

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!