42 years ago today :Beat Port Vale 3-0 - we were already in the League Cup Final and with a game or two in hand (as I remember) nicely placed to still mount a challenge for the League Title (the old 1st Division) and this 5th Round win put us into the quarter finals of the FA Cup - I can still recall us singing (and thoroughly believing) "and now you're gonna believe us - we're gonna win the lot."What a season that was - as a 19 year old, at the time, unforgettable.
Similar scenario in 1996. After the Franz Carr FA Cup win at Forest we still had a mathematical chance of the domestic treble. We won the League Cup easily beating Dirty Leeds, a week later Fowler did for us in the boycotted semi at Old Trafford and Manure ran away with the League as we fell away but still finished in what was overall a very respectable 4th place.
Tickets were really expensive, so wasn't an official boycott, a lot people just decided not to buy them because of the price. Despite being our first semi-final in decades we had probably the best part of 10K unsold, as did Liverpool. Don't think United or Chelsea sold out theirs either for the other semi at VP. We had the added thing as well of it being expensive a week after Wembley.And the Stretford End was shit, and we had the joy of a racist Liverpool fan in a box behind us abusing one of our Asian mates, although he wasn't so mouthy when the Old Bill were in there. IIRC he got done in court for it.
Quote from: PeterWithesShin on February 27, 2019, 08:04:25 PMTickets were really expensive, so wasn't an official boycott, a lot people just decided not to buy them because of the price. Despite being our first semi-final in decades we had probably the best part of 10K unsold, as did Liverpool. Don't think United or Chelsea sold out theirs either for the other semi at VP. We had the added thing as well of it being expensive a week after Wembley.And the Stretford End was shit, and we had the joy of a racist Liverpool fan in a box behind us abusing one of our Asian mates, although he wasn't so mouthy when the Old Bill were in there. IIRC he got done in court for it.Cheers for that.I couldn’t afford the trip back having flown home the previous weekend so played Sunday league and then watched our semi in a pub in Paris with a mate. I was effing and blinding in frustration, and was warned to behave. I remember the Telegraph report (Henry Winter / Paul Hayward?) the next morning summing up with “finally, when Villa had lost by an unfairly wide margin, they went over to their supporters who gave them a long and defiant ovation”. These days our end would be half empty.