Villa Park Redevelopment

[ADVILLAFAN]

And until recently they didn't even have to pay the players.

[Drummond]

What I like about the extended North is that our 4 stand ground remains just that.

[cdbearsfan]

And until recently they didn't even have to pay the players.

It's definitely got better, with them having abandoned the free labour and introduced a better playoff system. Could still do with promotion and relegation, though, as there are far too many one-sided matches especially early in the season.

[HolteL4]

I don't care what anybody says, Bruce did stabilise us.

Yes, only as a Playoff-chasing Championship team, but that's better than what went before!

As others have said, we were in freefall.

Nobody knew how well Deano would do. Nobody knew that within a decade we'd be winning a major trophy and qualifying for the Champions League.

But a modicum of respect is owed, because another appointment like Lambert, Garde, Di Matteo and we wouldn't be where we are now.

Bruce didn’t stabilize us at
We spent more money than anyone has ever done in the championship and he turned us into the archetypal championship team

Absolutely shocking Football shocking manager where did we finish 13th or something and you call that stabilization I call it the most abysmal time to be a Villa fan watching that shit every week
Don’t think I enjoyed one second of his tenure because I knew where it was going and where it was ending in total and abject failure

I don’t think I’ve ever been more depressed as a Villa fan than when Bruce was in charge because in my mind there was never any hope while he was there

Stabilized us my arse

Don't know winning 4 in 51 before he came in was pretty depressing tbh.

As has been said he did stabilise us, nothing he did was ground breaking but after the young and hungry experiments, and the skater gun approach to throwing money at players like McCormack we just needed someone to come in and do something simple. For me he came in at the right time and had we not been in complete financial turmoil he'd have left after the Fulham playoff final.

[ADVILLAFAN]

Transfer portal has improved things too. Teams like Alabama can't just stockpile talent. If players aren't being picked, they transfer to another College.

[cdbearsfan]

The vast majority of the money we spent in the Championship was spent before Bruce arrived so an utterly weird stick to beat him with. By any metric, he stabilised us.

[paul_e]

He did, but as a play off chasing championship team playing eye-wateringly poor football. I think it's very important to recognise that it's a bit of a back-handed compliment if hte best thing about him is that he was quite as a shit as Garde, Black and RDM.

What I will happily accept as fact though is that the summers under Sherwood and RDM are easily the 2 worst transfer windows we're ever had, setting the tone for the worst back-to-back seasons for the club in many of our lifetimes.

[PeterWithesShin]

2017 is over done as a bad window imo. We paid top dollar but Chester, Jedi, Kodj and Albert were great. Elphick, RDL and McCormack should have been solid but didn't work out, Gollini was decent but shouldn't have been thrown in as a starter straight and Tshibola was meh but a punt.

[PeterWithesShin]

[PeterWithesShin]

Somw of our younger viewers may not have seen much of the old Witton End, you see it quite well at the start of this vid.

[cdbearsfan]

Looks awesome. Bring that back, please.

[paul_e]

2017 is over done as a bad window imo. We paid top dollar but Chester, Jedi, Kodj and Albert were great. Elphick, RDL and McCormack should have been solid but didn't work out, Gollini was decent but shouldn't have been thrown in as a starter straight and Tshibola was meh but a punt.

Some individual players were fine, I agree but the overall approach to the window was poor, there was very little planning for what the team/squad would look like once we were done and all at a cost higher than anything the championship has ever seen before. I disagree on McCormack, he was never a good signing and plenty of people said it at the time. Gollini was too much money (comparatively) to not be a  regular starter in the championship, de Laet and Elphick were risky because both of them had missed a lot of games the year before, Jedi was ok but didn't have the legs to play midfield by the time we signed him. Adomah, Chester and Kodj were good signings but we needed to be much smarter in the planning of the squad around them.

[VILLA MOLE]

Somw of our younger viewers may not have seen much of the old Witton End, you see it quite well at the start of this vid.

Dont know why people thought he was smug  

[berneboy]

Looks awesome. Bring that back, please.

Wet? Wet? I drowned!
FA Cup Villa 0 Coventry 3
My programme was ruined and collecting my programme was a part of every match.

[eamonn]

So Doug had been to Houston, Mexico and Tokyo to check out football stadia in '73/74. What a well-travelle fellow!