Relegated

[dave.woodhall]

After Bradford, the Taylor report and everything else, I doubt very much any stand in the top flight could have survived until 2000 were that actually the case.

That's what I was told by those who know a bit about these things.

[tomd2103]

One thing I worry about is we're talking about Baker, Gardner and Steer coming back to the club and doing a job. They currently play for the 16th, 17th and 19th best teams in the division. Bristol City in particular appear to be terrible at the back.

Exactly.  We want players too good for that league, not those who belong in the lower reaches of it. 

[KevinGage]

The Three Wise Men? Fred Rinder?

Forgive me, but if it is anyone connected to the club in the past 20 years, I might be a tad cynical.

What was the £2-3 million spent on in 1992? 

[dave.woodhall]

The three wise men? Fred Rinder?

Forgive me, but if it is anyone connected to the club in the past 20 years, I might be a tad cynical.

What was the £2-3 million spent on in 1992? 

Members of the Football Licensing Authority and stadium safety experts. People like that.

[KevinGage]

That must have been a pretty rapid decline, to undergo the work it did in 1992 to ensure it up to speed with the new legislation by the mid 90s -only to then be completely unsafe a few years later.

The original structure was old, but it was reported in the match programme at the time that the work carried out in 1992 had strengthened the foundations and secure the stand for decades to come.

Not that it was beyond Herbert and co to lie, of course.

[Glenn Peen]

Agreed, Kevin Gage - I don't buy it, either. There was a lot of talk at the AGMs at the time about saving the old Trinity. Ellis gave repeated assurances the stand would be saved and the money was spent in the early 1990s to correct the problems.

Yet whether the stand internally was fit-for-purpose or not is not really the point. What mattered about the old Trinity was the outside - Rangers saved their inferior red brick facade and we could have saved our beautiful stately frontage.

The temporary custodians of our club seemed carefree about our history at the time, and more concerned about finding a quick and inferior fix. Was it ever thus.

[brian green]

I blame the architectural community at the time.  It was riddled with middle class snobbery.  If Villa Park had been a theatre or a railway station or law courts there would have been a nationwide outcry at the loss of part of our Victorian architectural history.  But it was only a football ground populated by the great unwashed who kept coal in the bath.

[Glenn Peen]

Again, I'm in complete agreement, Brian. Apathy was and is a big problem.

I remember approaching Carl Chinn at the time the Trinity was about to go and asking what he thought we should do. He agreed it was a problem but said the city faced bigger problems - Rover was on its knees and he was trying to help save the business. That was fair enough. The demise of the motor industry is part of a bigger malaise that has affected the city and led to the demise, departure or purchase of great Brummie brands, like Rover, HP and Cadbury's.

Yet in the end, everything seems connected. We've had the rug pulled from under us many times. Everything great goes. And in the end, we all just shrug. Maybe we're just tired? But if you tolerate this, then your children will be next. As someone once sang.

[maidstonevillain]

I blame the architectural community at the time.  It was riddled with middle class snobbery.  If Villa Park had been a theatre or a railway station or law courts there would have been a nationwide outcry at the loss of part of our Victorian architectural history.  But it was only a football ground populated by the great unwashed who kept coal in the bath.

Except that it wasn't Victorian. By quite a long way.

[Jimbo]

History has shown that you can demolish practically any building in Birmingham and get little more than a few shrugged shoulders in response. That's what we do here.

[Richard E]

History has shown that you can demolish practically any building in Birmingham and get little more than a few shrugged shoulders in response. That's what we do here.

Cracking! When does work start on The Sty?

[Glenn Peen]

True, Jimbo - in the future, everyone will bemoan the lost of our concrete heritage, such as the old Bull Ring and the new - now old - Central Library... In many ways, Brum is a bit like an American city. Forever changing, with a population wondering why it doesn't have a sense of history. I guess the story of Brum is always one of rapid change. In fact, that is Brum's history - ever-constant change.

But I miss the old Trinity. For me, it was a huge part of what made the Villa special.

[Risso]

After Bradford, the Taylor report and everything else, I doubt very much any stand in the top flight could have survived until 2000 were that actually the case.

That's what I was told by those who know a bit about these things.

I used to go to Burnden Park a lot with work when I first moved to the north west, and I'd imagine that was a similar story.  Old, cramped wooden seats and it really didn't feel safe at all.

[brian green]

I half expected the correction about the structure being Victorian.  Victoria may well have been dead but the architecture was very much in the Victorian idiom.  The names of monarchs only approximate to architectural styles. The Fascist style of public architecture lasted long after Mussolini decorated a Milanese petrol filling station.   There are still Modern buildings being erected today eighty years or more after the heyday of the Modern Movement.

[Chico Hamilton III]

I went up to Ibrox a couple of years ago and it is absolutely beautiful - and it was a poor copy of the Trinity Road when it was built. Archie Leitch took the Rangers board to see the Trinity and they said " we want that, but cheaper".

I can't believe that every effort was made to keep it. Which is ironic, given that money was no object to Rinder when it was built in the first place. What would he have though of Doug's decision to replace it with a B&Q design.