Tag: Aston Villa

Football League Review: Aston Villa’s Slow Motion Replay

Football League Review: Aston Villa’s Slow Motion Replay

Posted by | Aug 13, 2017 | ,

It says something for the condition of the club in recent years that the extent to which Aston Villa were swept aside by Cardiff City yesterday afternoon barely even merited that many headlines outside the cities of Cardiff and Birmingham the following day. This time last year, Aston Villa were preparing for their first season outside of the top flight in a quarter of a century with the burden of being pre-season favourites weighing heavily around their neck. Despite having finished hopelessly adrift of the rest at the foot of the Premier League in 2016, new owners and a...

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Dalian Atkinson

Dalian Atkinson

Posted by | Aug 15, 2016 | ,

Perhaps more than any other individual moment of that first season of the Premier League, it was this ten seconds of brilliance that drew the line in the sand between Old Football and New Football. Winning the ball from deep inside his own half, he ran a full sixty yards with the ball at his feet, largely untroubled by Wimbledon attempts to win it back, before lifting the ball over the goalkeeper and into the corner of the goal. In the bottom left-hand corner of the screen, we can see the travelling supporters tumbling down the vast open terrace...

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Aston Villa: The Shambles Continues

Aston Villa: The Shambles Continues

Posted by | Apr 20, 2016 | , |

The full time whistle, when it blew at Old Trafford on Saturday afternoon, only really confirmed what was already essentially known. Aston Villa, founder members of the Football League and former champions of the whole of Europe, were relegated from the Premier League. Villa’s final surrender came very much in the style of the rest of the club’s season – lethargic and sickly. Anybody hoping for this team to show much semblance of a willingness to put up a fight had either not been paying much attention to this shower of shadows over the previous eight months or was...

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Video of the Day: Manchester United vs Aston Villa, January 1983

Video of the Day: Manchester United vs Aston Villa, January 1983

Posted by | Apr 16, 2016 | |

Aston Villa will be relegated from the Premier League this weekend, and it is perhaps appropriate that their match over the course of this two days sees the club travel to Old Trafford to play Manchester United, fellow founder members of the Premier League but also club that has often seemed to have some sort of hold over Villa. What a different world it was on New Year’s Day 1983. Liverpool were six points clear of Nottingham Forest at the top of the Premier League, with Manchester United, under the guidance of Ron Atkinson, in fourth place, eight points...

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Video of the Day: Millwall vs Aston Villa, March 1989

Video of the Day: Millwall vs Aston Villa, March 1989

Posted by | Apr 2, 2016 | |

Aston Villa, then, are almost certainly heading down from the Premier League at the end of this season. A home thrashing against Chelsea earlier this afternoon means that they the thin likelihood of new caretaker-manager Eric Black is starting to vanish on the horizon. This afternoon, we’re going back a little over a quarter of a century to the second half of the 1988/89 season, and Villa had just been promoted back to the top flight after a year away. Indeed, they’d kicked off their return to the First Division with a comfortable three-one win against Millwall. By the...

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