Days that Rocked the Villa

Days that shaped or appeared to shape our history - list your days that shook Aston Villa  (good or Bad)

1973 ...ish - The Sale of Bruce RiochI was very young at the time, I was almost in tears when my dad told me that we sold him to Derby county - I didn't even understand the concept of seeling players. My Dad tried to explain that he wanted to play in the first division (villa div 2 at the time) and Derby would probably pay him more money. I still couldn't understand - but he wouldn't be playing for Aston Villa - so what was the point ?

1982 - Resignation of Ron SaundersAn absolute Bombshell - League champions at the time - not doing so well in the league - but no one expected this

2006 - Randy Wants to buy usAn american billionaiire - who loved Aston Villa - I barley slept for a week !

2010 O Neil Quits Villa - not really a surprise as such - but the timing was ! - just 3 days before a new season

2010 - Darren Bent Our biggest ever signing - sure to score us goals

2011 ??? Mcleish appointed Aston Villa manager
- what the living hell was that all about ?

Good idea for a thread dude 

I guess I'd say...

1983 - Doug returns - I was 2 at the time so don't remember it, but certainly the way he made sure the 80-82 team got dismantled was insane. My first memory of Villa was as a Division 2 team, and I just could not work out why we were there when I'd learnt that we were league and European champions just a few years earlier; it still doesn't make sense now!

1990 - Kevin Gage says we won't lose another game this season - Okay so I am being harsh blaming Gage! I was just trying to think of a point in time I could use, and I remember my dad, grandad and uncles all saying that he shouldn't have said it - then bam! Next two games, we lost 3-0 at home to Wimbledon, 2-0 away at Coventry, and the pendulum swung from us being 45 points ahead with 23 games in hand* to losing the league by 10 points to Liverpool. Who knows how the future may have changed had we won the league?

*I may be exaggerating on how far ahead we were

1993 - *That* Steve Bruce goal - 8 minutes into injury time when Man U got that winner against Sheffield Wednesday, and it felt like the turning point in the tile race. This one was even bigger than a few years earlier, because it was the first Premier League season. I am sure in a parallel universe somewhere, we have taken over world football since winning that title 

1998 - Dwight Yorke leaving - not necessarily the same impact as the other moments I've listed but it broke my bloody heart. I don't suppose we would have bought Dublin and Merson had Yorke stayed, but just imagine we had, and that was our front three with Yorke instead of Collymore or Joachim...

2009 - Villa 2-2 Stoke - that was the game, when they scored those two late goals to steal a draw, that I walked out of Villa Park KNOWING that we wouldn't get in the Champions League even though it was still in our hands. Had we won, it would have taken us 8 points clear of Arsenal. Again, who knows what may have changed had we got in the CL and probably been able to attract a level of player that could have moved us up a level?

I guess another one when the signing of Heskey, when arsenal signed Ashavin - I gave up on MON ever getting us CL at that point

smetro wrote:I guess another one when the signing of Heskey, when arsenal signed Ashavin - I gave up on MON ever getting us CL at that point

Here's the thing. I remember not really believing we would do it, then we went to Blackburn away. There were five and half thousand of us, it was amazing. We beat them 2-0, but we did it like the elite teams do - we professionally swatted them aside. I walked out of Ewood and for the first time - I believed!

But then, there were two games soon after that which changed my mind. The Stoke game, but just before that, we lost at home to Chelsea not long after Gus Hiddink had joined, and he just totally outdone MON on a tactical level, to the point where I said on the way they out, "They might have better players than us, but if the managers were in opposing dugouts, we'd have won that game". I sat in the upper Trinity on about the halfway line in those days, such an amazingly good view, but a very frustrating viewpoint from which to watch a Martin O'Neill team!

I think after that it was still 7 games before we won again.

We were doing great with a 4-5-1/4-3-3, but MON just HAD to go back to 4-4-2.  :x

Wednesday 8th July 2015 and the meeting that never was....

When David Platt left for Bari for £5m. I can remember it clearly - around the 19th July 1991 I had just returned back to school after a school trip to Snowdonia and dad picked me up with the Evening Mail in hand saying the inevitable had happened... We struggled after that.. until BFR came in!

bazzah wrote:Wednesday 8th July 2015 and the meeting that never was....

I knew when I saw this thread had been updated that there'd be something like this 

bazzah wrote:When David Platt left for Bari for £5m.  I can remember it clearly - around the 19th July 1991 I had just returned back to school after a school trip to Snowdonia and dad picked me up with the Evening Mail in hand saying the inevitable had happened...  We struggled after that.. until BFR came in!

Dude.... there was no time between Platt leaving and Ron arriving...  :)

kimbo wrote:

bazzah wrote:When David Platt left for Bari for £5m.  I can remember it clearly - around the 19th July 1991 I had just returned back to school after a school trip to Snowdonia and dad picked me up with the Evening Mail in hand saying the inevitable had happened...  We struggled after that.. until BFR came in!

Dude.... there was no time between Platt leaving and Ron arriving...  :)

And BFR quickly built a very stylish villa side - a pity a lot of the players were in the twighlight of there careers - but for a season and a half they were a total joy to watch. A much overlooked Villa side...

smetro wrote:

kimbo wrote:

bazzah wrote:When David Platt left for Bari for £5m.  I can remember it clearly - around the 19th July 1991 I had just returned back to school after a school trip to Snowdonia and dad picked me up with the Evening Mail in hand saying the inevitable had happened...  We struggled after that.. until BFR came in!

Dude.... there was no time between Platt leaving and Ron arriving...  :)

And BFR quickly built a very stylish villa side - a pity a lot of the players were in the twighlight of there careers - but for a season and a half they were a total joy to watch. A much overlooked Villa side...

I was born the month we won the league so obviously have no memory of that or the European Cup. So 92/93 is easily - easily - the best Villa team I've seen.

kimbo wrote:

smetro wrote:

kimbo wrote:

bazzah wrote:When David Platt left for Bari for £5m.  I can remember it clearly - around the 19th July 1991 I had just returned back to school after a school trip to Snowdonia and dad picked me up with the Evening Mail in hand saying the inevitable had happened...  We struggled after that.. until BFR came in!

Dude.... there was no time between Platt leaving and Ron arriving...  :)

And BFR quickly built a very stylish villa side - a pity a lot of the players were in the twighlight of there careers - but for a season and a half they were a total joy to watch. A much overlooked Villa side...

I was born the month we won the league so obviously have no memory of that or the European Cup. So 92/93 is easily - easily - the best Villa team I've seen.

I was born in 80, so me too. Love that season, it was amazing

Jamie Gray wrote:

kimbo wrote:

smetro wrote:

kimbo wrote:

bazzah wrote:When David Platt left for Bari for £5m.  I can remember it clearly - around the 19th July 1991 I had just returned back to school after a school trip to Snowdonia and dad picked me up with the Evening Mail in hand saying the inevitable had happened...  We struggled after that.. until BFR came in!

Dude.... there was no time between Platt leaving and Ron arriving...  :)

And BFR quickly built a very stylish villa side - a pity a lot of the players were in the twighlight of there careers - but for a season and a half they were a total joy to watch. A much overlooked Villa side...

I was born the month we won the league so obviously have no memory of that or the European Cup. So 92/93 is easily - easily - the best Villa team I've seen.

I was born in 80, so me too. Love that season, it was amazing

My dad refused to not have a video so got one of those combined video/DVD players... every pre-season I dust off some old VHS's and watch the 89/90, 92/93 and 95/96 season reviews with him :)

The Holte going - still got my last day certificate.
worse for me the Trinity going, to be replaced with an exterior that looks to me like a fucking light engineering industrial estate unit

De Kuip wrote:The Holte going - still got my last day certificate.
worse for me the Trinity going, to be replaced with an exterior that looks to me like a fucking light engineering industrial estate unit

Me too, it's in a shoebox full of pointless stuff that will NEVER get thrown away  :)

Completely agree on the Trinity. I was awestruck by how beautiful it was when I was a little kid. The replacement was just awful.