Aston Villa > Reviews (80)

Aston Villa's Holte Army - with our very own general!

I've been an Aston Villa supporter now for many years.
I remember the 1982 European Cup final that we won with pride and that is without a doubt our greatest achievement in the modern game.

However, Aston Villa comes with a proud and very unique history in English Football, not least the formation of the Football league in 1888, which was the brain child of the Director of Aston Villa, William McGregor.
McGregor was a Scotsman who moved down to the area and joined up with Villa in around 1878.
By the end of McGregor's association with Aston Villa he had seen them win the League 6 times and the FA Cup 4 times. A fact that famously led McGregor to say:
"For brilliance and, at the same time, for consistency of achievement, for activity in philanthropic enterprise, for astuteness of management and for general alertness, the superiors of Aston Villa cannot be found"

Since then, we've had our fair share of upheaval. The main periods of problem have been in the 1960's when we landed up in the 3rd tier of football, and we had the arrival of a name that was soon to become infamous with Aston Villa football club - Doug Ellis.
The other main areas of trouble have been in the last few years with a campaign to remove the chairman Doug Ellis by fans

In 1973, Aston Villa appointed the manager Ron Saunders, who then lead the team on to win the Championship in 1980-81 and into Europe. Then we had the bombshell of Saunders quitting after a fall out with our Chairman of the time.
However, the team he had assembled were led by Tony Barton to a 1-0 victory in the 1982 European Cup final, one of only four English Clubs to have managed this achievement.

This marked a pinnacle though and Villa declined for most of the 1980s culminating in relegation in 1987. This was followed by promotion the following year and second place in the football League in 1989. However, supporters were beginning to voice even then discontent about our Chairman Doug Ellis and the handling of the club's future.

Villa was then one of the founders of the Premier league, as we know it today that was formed in 1992. We finished runners up that season to Manchester United. The rest of the Nineties were a mixed bag, with Managers leaving, inconsistent league placing but also two league cup wins and reaching the final of the 2000 FA Cup….. The last game to have been played at Wembley, where we lost to Chelsea 1-0.

Through the next few years we continued to fluctuate through the league, and then we landed up with a change in 2006 that was all a bit of a blur!

Suddenly we were without a manager. David O'Leary left under acrimonious circumstances, with Fans, Players and Chairman all seemingly at each others throats.
The worst was feared by many of us, expecting relegation as a real possibility.

But then, rumours began to circulate.
Our new manager was supposed to be Martin O'Neill, who had been tout by the FA for the England job previously and then the news many of us had been waiting for.

Doug Ellis was finally selling up!

To begin with, many fans wondered if the takeover was a joke and that it wouldn't happen. We'd had so many false dawns in the last few years; we could hardly believe it was happening.

But who was the new owner? Nobody knew much about him except he was American and was the owner of the Cleveland Browns American Football team. He was a billionaire, and we found out was funding the buy out with his own money and not via huge debt.

And then along came the board. Randy Lerner is the Chairman, with an experienced board of Richard FitzGerald, the Chief Executive, and Non-executive directors of Bob Kain, Michal Martin and General Charles Krulak.

The General has already become a legend with the Villa Faithful on the Internet, as he spends some time each day visiting a number of fan based sites with message boards interacting with us! This has led to a great opening of communication between the fans and the club, with several suggestions being taken on-board and used.
I can't think of any other club who has such a direct and approachable level of communication with its fans, and we most certainly do appreciate it!

As for the playing side of Aston Villa at the moment?

Well, we've got Martin O'Neill, who is once again being courted by the press with the England Managers job being vacant as the best out there. However, he has openly committed himself to the job at Aston Villa, and why shouldn't he.

We've got a brand new state of the art training ground - one of the best, if not the best in Europe.
A very young and exciting team being shaped who are playing well - So well in fact, we've had 3 regulars called into the England Squad for the first time in many years (another fact is Aston Villa have supplied more players for the England team than any other English Club).
We've got a Chairman, who unusually for today's game is prepared to give the manager time to shape the team and push on for more success. We've been given a 5-year plan at Aston Villa, and so far Randy Lerner seems more than happy with the progress being made and is continuing to back our manager as needed.

Overall, we've also made some good if steady progress on the pitch. The 2006/07 season was always going to be difficult, because our manager didn't arrive in time to really do any major deals in the transfer market, and while our squad is still undoubtedly thin (very thin in the Right Back position with no recognized player for that position), we've now got a quality and resilience that is showing through.

We've still got some way to go, and the next two main transfer windows are going to determine an awful lot about how we've going to achieve our ambitions of gaining a regular European spot over the coming 2 or 3 years.
Undoubtedly, Martin O'Neill manages to get the best out of players, even those often considered ordinary previously. His squads are known to be made up of players willing to work, and work hard and he certainly doesn't tolerate Prima Donnas. This is also very apparent in our current squad at Villa Park.

Aston Villa plays at Villa Park in Birmingham. The ground is visible from the M6 motorway and it a 4 star rated UFEA stadium. Plans for some refurbishment over the summer of 2008 are in place, with further plans to extend and remodel what is currently known as the North stand, which will help increase capacity from just over 42,000 to around 51,000 although we don't know the timing for the North Stand refurbishment as yet.
It has hosted 16 England internationals at senior level, the first in 1899, and the most recent in 2005.
Villa Park is also the most used stadium for FA cup semi-finals, having hosted 55 there in its time.

The main fans stand is called The Holte.
This is where you are amongst The Holte Army - and for now at least, we have our very own real life General to help cheer the lads on.

Up the Villa!

Proud History - Bright Future.