ASTON VILLA

‘There are football grounds and there are football grounds. Then there is Villa Park.’

SIMON INGLIS football ground historian extraordinaire

‘Shaw, Williams, prepared to venture down the left.

There’s a good ball in for Tony Morley. Oh, it must be, and it is! It’s Peter Withe.’

BRIAN MOORE commentating on the goal that won the European Cup*

Beating Bayern Munich to win that European Cup in 1982 was almost the worst thing that could have happened to Aston Villa. It was a remarkable victory considering that Villa had been in the Third Division only 10 years earlier and had won the First Division title in 1981 using just 14 players. Brian Moore’s words are emblazoned round the four stands at Villa Park as a reminder of their greatest night, but also serve as an equally stark reminder that nothing like it has happened to Villa since, and doesn’t seem likely to happen in the future. And that’s an odd prediction to make about what has been, and should be, one of the biggest clubs in England.

Villa Park will always be a very happy place for me (see chapter on Crystal Palace), but when you see it for the first time as an opposition fan it is a very imposing site with one end dominated by a huge Victorian mansion-like building, which is all the more impressive for rising out of what looks like a surprisingly deprived area.

And Palace fans will always owe Villa a debt of gratitude. In 1905, when the club was formed, the secretary/manager, Edmund Goodman, was appointed from Villa and obligingly brought a full set of their kit with him, hopefully with their permission. So, for many years of our history, claret and blue were our colours too and will be again if I ever buy the club, which, sadly, I never will, unless this book turns into the Harry Potter of football.

In fact, we all owe Villa a debt of gratitude. One of their directors, William McGregor, a local shop-owner, noticed that they got far bigger crowds for competitive cup matches than they did for the irregular friendlies they usually played. He approached a number of other clubs with that notion and in 1888 Villa took their place as founder-members of the Football League with 11 other teams, all of whom are still in it. And the chairman? Why, William McGregor of course. Look him up: brilliant beard.

Villa’s history before that is very unusual because they are one of the few clubs who can’t pin down the exact date of their beginning. (If you are actually reading this cover to cover, you are yet to learn that clubs are surprisingly definite about facts and dates from longer ago than they have any right to be.) And that means, of course, that I can’t be definite either, which is why you probably shouldn’t use this as a textbook.

It was probably early in 1874 that members of the Villa Cross Methodist Chapel in a suburb of Birmingham called Aston decided to form a football team, although whether or not it was after they’d witnessed an impromptu game on their way to prayers is impossible to know (doesn’t stop people claiming that though).

Now, my father-in-law was a Methodist minister,† so it doesn’t surprise me at all that they didn’t waste time looking for a frivolous Fancy Dan name. No Rovers, Swifts or Albion for them. They were in Aston and they were in the Villa Cross Chapel. Ten seconds that name decision would have taken, knowing Methodists. Followed by a massive row about who was making the sandwiches.

Regardless, the club nickname soon became ‘The Villans’. Straightforward, no nonsense. Don’t make me say Methodist again.

Villa were the most successful club of the Victorian era. They won five League titles and three FA Cups in that time, and considering there were only 13 years of the Victorian era remaining when the League was formed, that is good going!

In 1897 (the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee) they moved to a ground on the site of an old amusement park. There is no official record of it ever having been named Villa Park. The fans just decided that’s what it was going to be called. Come on, you know what they were like. It was a park and Villa played there, why waste time?

But what a ground it became. Even as a kid watching black-and-white telly, you could tell it was something different. One of the stands had what appeared to be gables on it, and stained-glass windows, with a giant lion in the middle; and the Holte End, where the home fans gathered, seemed to go on forever.

By the time I started to go there regularly, the glory days of Europe were receding but the gaps in the terrace only seemed to emphasise the sheer size of the place. And it could have been bigger. In 1911, an ambitious director wanted to build a mega-stadium holding 104,000 people and incorporating a giant aquarium and saunas for the players. It sounds more like the lair of a James Bond villain, so I’m almost sad it didn’t happen.

Sadly, as the grandeur of the famous old ground diminished, so did the fortunes of the club. With occasional exceptions (and, to be fair, winning the European Cup is a pretty massive occasional exception), Villa have underachieved greatly. The phrase ‘sleeping giant’ is often used to describe them. They are a giant, but the sleep is deep. Still doesn’t stop Villa Park being full for most games or claiming an impressive list of celebrity fans. Prince William supports them, which really annoys me. They are not his local team and if anyone should support Palace, it’s him. Ex-Prime Minister David Cameron supports them.* Tom Hanks supports them. Ozzy Osbourne supports them, as does the brilliant poet Benjamin Zephaniah, half of Duran Duran, one of Ron Weasley’s twin brothers and Private Pike from Dad’s Army.

That’ll be an interesting executive box if they all turn up at once.

Why You Shouldn’t Support Them

■ They have enough fans already, most of them celebrities.

■ Yes, they won the European Cup, but that was in 1982 – there were only about 12 countries in Europe then, and one of them was Luxembourg.

■ Our goalkeeper once scored an own-goal there when he managed to nutmeg himself.