Happy Days Are Here Again - Repeat!!! (Aston Villa F.C.)

Member Name: marandina

Product:	Aston Villa F.C.
Date:	03/09/06 (221 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: We have some money and a great manager

Disadvantages: It may take a while to stoke former glories

“Aston Villa have completed a £6.5m deal for Celtic midfielder Stilian Petrov. The 27-year-old Bulgaria captain has signed a four-year contract and is boss Martin O'Neill's first signing since taking over at Villa Park.” And so I pinched myself following a whirlwind few weeks where the shackles of the relentless Doug Ellis had finally been broken and the club was now owned by one Randy Lerner, the owner of the Cleveland Browns and billionaire from the US. Better still, the redoubtable Irishman, Martin O’Neill was now the manager having taken over from the hapless David O’Leary. It’s hard to put into words what a turnaround we’ve seen recently at Villa Park. I desperately didn’t want to include the usual “I’ve been a fan since…” as that would be sooooooo boring in a review like this but having consulted my magic 8-Ball for inspiration (it’s where I get most of the stuff for my ops….y’know, the thing you shake and it returns a phrase) then I am forced to head down that alley of cliché and say that I’ve been a fan since 1972 (shoot me now). Yes, I am sorry for being so obvious but I still remember my uncle taking me all those years ago when the club was lounging in Division 2 – a sleeping giant waiting to be woken.

It’s been a rollercoaster 34 years since. I’ve seen the mighty Villa win the league championship, the European Cup in 1982 and a couple of League Cup triumphs at Wembley (I didn’t see the win in 1975 v Norwich when Ray Graydon scored from a penalty) but, for the last decade, wallow in the doldrums due to the lack of spark of an unimaginative Board. It got to the point where I finally decided not to renew my season ticket after over 20 years of unbroken purchases. So for the last couple of seasons, I’ve become an armchair supporter just hoping and praying that something would change one day and lo and behold it has! Of course, you wonder how much recent events have been down to the current chairman’s ill health and advancing age. With Mr Ellis into his early eighties and fighting against cancer, he’s finally sold his controlling interest to the American, Mr Lerner and it looks like funds are available to the club to spend in January (notwithstanding the Petrov purchase).

Randy (only we could have a chairman called “Randy”) has a lot of tradition to look back on. Aston Villa was formed in 1874 and have won honours including: European Cup Winners: 1982, European Super Cup Winners: 1982-83, InterToto Cup Winners: 2001, First Division Champions: 1893-94, 1895-96, 1896-97, 1898-99, 1899-1900, 1909-10,1980-81, Second Division Champions: 1937-38, 1959-60, Third Division Champions: 1971-72, FA Cup Winners: 1887, 1895, 1897, 1905, 1913, 1920, 1957, League Cup Winners: 1961, 1975, 1977, 1994, 1996 and FA Youth Cup Winners: 1972, 1980, 2002. A proud tradition has made Villa the biggest club in the Birmingham area and a history that is the envy of its counterparts at St. Andrews (Birmingham City) and The Hawthorns (West Bromwich Albion). This has always given an extra spice in my household as I grew up with my dad being a Bluenose (Birmingham City fan) and both of my brothers supporting the Baggies at West Brom. In fact, the first game I ever went to was at St. Andrews which my dad took me to. Blues promptly conceded in the first minute and lost 0-1 to Ipswich Town and the only good thing about that day was the Bovril at half-time loik. A couple of weeks later, my uncle took me to see Villa play Fulham and it was a whole different experience as the game finished 1-1 but the atmosphere and passion at the ground was electric. I decided at the tender age of seven to support the Villa and have stayed loyal ever since (there are 3 things that people won’t change – their bank account provider, their religion and their football team). To be fair to my old man, he did take me to see Villa play Sunderland in the last game at Villa Park of the 1975 season. We finished second to ManU that year and beat Sunderland 2-0 in front of nearly 60,000 fans. The only problem was that my dad left it to late and so we got locked out and had to go home instead. I did get too Highbury for the final fixture of the 1981 season. We promptly lost 0-2 with the heavily permed Alan Sunderland scoring one of the goals and all sorts of aggro kicking off at the final whistle. Fortunately, Ipswich were losing 1-2 at Middlesborough on the same afternoon, handing us the league champeenship with nearly all of the game dominated by what was going on at Ayresome Park. Thousands of brummies had their ears glued to trannie radios that day and the result up north outweighed the poor performance in London and the really desperately, flat warm beer I’d had in Landon taaaaaaaaan.

In 1994, I painted my face claret and blue and descended on Wembley to see us beat the mighty Manchester United 3-1 in the League Cup Final. United were on for the domestic treble that season and still went on to win the League and FA Cup double but we beat them with a Dalian Atkinson goal in the first half and a Dean Saunders goal in the second was followed by a last minute penalty as Andrei Kanchelskis was sent off for handling on the line. That was a wonderful day out and I still remember travelling back up the M1 with all the coaches with United fans as their passengers with the blinds pulled down avoiding any taunts from the Villa fans. Two years later, the day was repeated as we beat a poor Leeds United side 3-0 with Dwight Yorke scoring the third after a left-foot thunderbolt had opened the scoring by the perennial scapegoat, Savo Milosevic. Of course, things haven’t always been so joyous and the 2000 FA Cup Final defeat to Chelski is still a vivid memory with everything going so well up until we kicked off. We sucked that day with David James dropping the ball onto the scorer’s foot from a cross and we slumped to a 0-1 defeat. I’d waited all my life to see Villa finally make it into an FA Cup final only for the team to play like donkeys. Oh well, that’s footie for ya.

The last couple of seasons have been awful. With stories of Doug Ellis’s parsimony a regular occurrence and the gulf between clubs like Villa and the elite of Manchester, Chelski, Arsenal and Liverpool ever widening, it’s been difficult not to get depressed. It was a big thing to stop renewing my season ticket and I’m not entirely sure that all the foreign take-overs in the game are completely healthy. Abramovic’s billions have turned the Prem into a cakewalk for Chelsea whist both Hearts and now West Ham seem to be benefiting from substantial investments from foreign owners. You can’t help but question the motives of these high rollers from Russia and the like although both the Villa and Man United now have American owners who appear to be business men with possible alternative agendas. Still, I can only hope that Mr Lerner continues to invest in the club and that we can start to think in terms of Europe again. Gareth Barry has signed a new contract, Steve Davis has his best years ahead of him and Luke Moore looks like he’s finally adapting to the big league. Gabriel Agbonlahor looks like a speed merchant in the Tony Daley mould while Juan Pablo Angel looks like he’s exorcising a few demons with the start he’s made to the Premiership this season. Seven points from the first three games including a draw at the new home of the Arse (sorry, couldn’t resist it) and third place is nosebleed territory compared to what we’ve become used to in Brumland. I honestly believe that happier days are ahead and I am making enquiries to renew my season ticket again. As I gaze at my framed photograph of Villa Park perched above my PC in our spare room (yes, I am that sad), I still dare to dream that we may one day win the FA Cup final and I will be there to see it. One day...


Thanks to the few hardy souls that have bothered to read this footie opinion.

Mara

Summary: Overview of the situation at the Villa