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Introduction

I ONLY HAVE VAGUE RECOLLECTIONS OF ATTENDING THE FIRST professional football match in my life. It was Aston Villa against Crystal Palace at Villa Park on Saturday, 21 February 1981. Only the help of modern-day technology in the shape of web archives allow me to be so exact. I have better memories of another game in that momentous season when Villa swept aside John Neal’s Middlesbrough 3–0. Apart from it being drizzly and Villa dominating, I have a more unusual recollection. I was sat in the front row of the Trinity Road Stand close to the managers’ dugout and with only the advertising hoardings separating me from the gravel path that joined the muddied playing surface. I felt that close to the pitch I could almost tug on the shirt of Villa’s flying winger Tony Morley. It was there on that day I shared a most important revelation to my father. ‘Dad,’ I said, ‘I need a wee-wee.’ Dad took one look at the congested front row we would have had to negotiate and replied: ‘Do it here,’ as he stood me up and encouraged me to wee into the short wall housing an advertising hoarding.

Aston Villa played a significant role in my development as a child. But I was not forced into my Villa upbringing; it felt natural and was actually a third generation evolving. My grandfather Bill, an asphalter, was a Villa supporter and his favourite player was the prolific Villa and England striker from the 1920s, Billy Walker. My dad Derek’s favourite was rampaging frontman Gerry Hitchens. My older brother Jeff, who played for the county, was likened to Andy Gray because of his blond curly locks – and maybe his goalscoring too. So Villa was in the blood. Naturally, my son Isaac is now a fourth-generation Villa fan.

My early exposure to Villa Park gave me a more advanced insight into the workings of Aston Villa and football in general than many of my school-friends, who were likely playing Star Wars in their back gardens instead. Not that I wasn’t immune to outside interests, but there was usually a link to Villa somewhere, such as the quest to complete my Panini football sticker album. Aston Villa players were always the most hotly sought after, obviously, with Villa’s Gordon Cowans proving the most elusive. If I wasn’t pestering Mum and Dad for another packet of stickers I would have been listening to a Duran Duran seven-inch vinyl. When I heard Duran Duran were predominantly Villa fans, it only added to the attraction of their catchy tunes.

The basic facts are known of Villa’s progress during this period, in terms of conquering Europe, and then a decline so swift they were relegated just five years later. When I became a sports journalist in later years, that sudden rise-and-fall journey and the mostly untold events behind the scenes fascinated me. The question of what happened to cause such a fall from grace strengthened in my consciousness when I hosted low-key question and answer evenings with the likes of Gary Shaw, Tony Morley, Ken McNaught, Gordon Cowans and Jimmy Rimmer. The overriding message from those league championship and European Cup-winning players who I grew up idolising was that their team’s success would have continued had it not been for the return of Doug Ellis as chairman in November 1982. I was tempted to side with the majority view but felt this was a subject that warranted greater investigation.

I set myself the challenge of writing my latest book on a subject close to my heart. I have not just aimed to glorify my childhood heroes but have attempted to expose a narrative that has never really been studied in the detail required to understand Villa’s climb from the cusp of bankruptcy in 1968 to glory in the 1970s and early 80s. And then their painful fall thereafter. Despite brief seasonal highs, Aston Villa has never been the same since. I have tried to avoid taking sides and aimed to present the history of events in a transparent way that tells its own tale. Readers no doubt will develop their own opinions from the contents of these pages – adding to what some may know already.

My own view is that the controversial departure of manager Ron Saunders in February 1982 had a more damaging impact on Aston Villa’s prospects of extended glory than Ellis buying back into Villa later that year, which tends to be the common belief. I feel Ellis receives much unwarranted criticism around this transition, as some people not so close to events blame Ellis for Saunders’ departure, when he was not even part of Villa then. The exodus of players from that team had begun prior to Ellis’s return when Kenny Swain moved to Nottingham Forest in September 1982. Allan Evans submitted a written transfer request before Ellis returned, so things were not all rosy at Villa prior to his reclaiming of power.

Ellis, however, is far from blameless in Villa’s subsequent decline. While his diligence at ensuring the club avoided financial problems before and after the Millennium, he was often overcautious and wrongfully placed more emphasis on cost-cutting and banking half-decent transfer fees than investing in the team. The Graham Turner years crystallised this failure. He allowed quality players like Gordon Cowans, Steve McMahon and Dennis Mortimer to leave, often without replenishing the stocks with similar quality. Too often, Ellis was happy for rookies, either from the reserves or another club, to step into the breach. There will always be players who demand that opportunity through their own ability such as Mark Walters, Tony Daley and Tony Dorigo, or Martin Keown from outside, but too many inadequate players were entrusted for too long in the first team. That policy cost the club eventually and led to what became an inevitable relegation in 1987. In fairness to Turner, this book will detail how he identified several quality players who were gettable, but Ellis traditionally refused to pay the market rate to buy in these higher-profile players – and he and the club paid the price. Fast forward to recent times, it was during moments of reflection on a bizarre period in the club’s history, when a golden era quickly descended into chaos, anarchy and failure, that I knew I had to write this book to discover what the hell happened: why was a gradual and then sharp rise followed by such a sudden, humbling fall?

So where did I start with this book, other than the idea itself?

I wrote a list of more than fifty names I wanted to speak to who I felt would have important views on this period, and thankfully I attained the vast majority of those interviews. At the very top of that list were Ron Saunders, Doug Ellis, Graham Turner, Allan Evans, Tony Barton’s family, and Steve Stride, who began at Villa as assistant secretary before he was made secretary in 1979. They were my top six targets, easily explained. Ellis and Saunders are clearly the two chief protagonists through the book. Ellis controlled the club twice and was twice ousted, once in 1975 when he was stood down as chairman and reduced to the rank of mere board director, and again in 1979 when his position on the board became virtually untenable and he was bought out by Ronald Bendall. Saunders managed Villa from 1974 to 1982; his stewardship was significant in the club’s success but also led to several personality clashes that greatly affected Villa’s internal workings. Barton and Turner were the managers after Saunders and it was important to ascertain their roles in the departure of many of the European Cup-winning players and how much influence they had on transfers in and out of Villa, as Ellis has generally taken the brunt of criticism over the years for most things that went awry. Evans was a player who was there from 1977, through to Graham Taylor’s successful promotion campaign out of the Second Division in 1988; similarly Stride’s longevity at Villa from the early 1970s into the new millennium meant he was also a key voice in observing all significant events at Villa Park.

The many interviews I conducted during the creation of this book were executed in a variety of ways, whether over the telephone with people like Kenny Swain, Jimmy Rimmer, Charlie Aitken and others, via email and the phone with Ron Saunders Jr on behalf of his father, or in person. All were greatly appreciated and the memories of those key conversations will stay in the memory.

At the time, I was writing weekly ‘Lunch with a Football Legend’ columns for the Daily Star Sunday and while meeting some of those guests who had relevant Villa links, I was able to use the meeting as an opportunity to go into more detail about their time at the club outside of what would be relevant to the paper. These players included Allan Evans, Paul Elliott over an orange juice at the Holiday Inn, Central London, Kenny Swain at the Hilton Hotel, St George’s Park, when he was still coaching England age-group teams for the FA, Ken McNaught at the Rose and Crown near Redditch, Gary Shaw at The Plough in Harborne, Garry Thompson at a pub in Marston Green, near Birmingham Airport, Des Bremner Horse and Jockey in Sutton Coldfield, Colin Gibson at his lovely house in Sutton Coldfield, Gordon Cowans in Sam’s Clubhouse Sports Bar at The Belfry and many more.

Allan Evans’ interview took place at the St Mellion Hotel and Golf Resort near to his home in Saltash, Cornwall. I was only too pleased to pay for dinner as both his honesty and the detail of his memories were excellent. Evans, a long-time teetotaller, also introduced me to a refreshing summer drink of ginger beer and lime with ice.

I was delighted to accept an invitation from Doug Ellis to interview him at his magnificent house in Four Oaks, one of the more salubrious areas of Birmingham. My Land Rover looked quite lonely on the sizeable loose-stone driveway. His cooperative and long-term personal assistant Marion sat in with us in a rear dining room that looked out onto his back garden. He informed me it was the garden he had walked round with tears in his eyes when having to tell Graham Turner he was sacked. I felt Mr Ellis was impressed by the depth of my research and knowledge of proceedings at the club during the era discussed. But I also felt he was relieved when he showed me to his front door afterwards, for during the two hours we spoke I never held back with any difficult questions that had to be asked. Ultimately, he has been criticised for many things and it was only fair he had an opportunity to explain his side of the story.

I was slightly frustrated not to come away with more detail on certain topics like the sale of players in the early 1980s, but he did maintain he never once ordered a manager to sell a particular player. This goes against the grain of common perception. However, Graham Turner, who has rarely spoken in detail of his Villa days, gave me a very honest interview in which he maintained he was in total control of player transfers in and out of the club. After thirty years have passed, why would he do anything other than say it as it was? So I genuinely feel Ellis was not as responsible for some controversial player sales as we have been led to believe over the years. There is no doubt, though, Ellis put managers under great pressure to bring in money before he would sanction reinvestment on new players.

Due to illness, Ron Saunders’ quotes and experiences from his time at Villa were derived via the assistance of his son, Ronnie. The detail surrounding his exit from Villa Park is, in my opinion, extraordinary. This has always been a key development at the club that has been shrouded in mystery and I was very pleased to be able to clear up this matter more than I feel has ever been done in the past. This is not a failing of any other writers but just that Saunders has been such a private and introverted character since his retirement from football in 1987. My book presented an opportunity for him to set the record straight once and for all and also to respond to some comments that were not so complimentary. I was very grateful that the Saunders family kindly assisted me on these themes. On trips up to the West Midlands from his Essex home, Ronnie Jr discussed the topics I had raised by email with his father and mother, Breda, and I remain indebted to them for their time answering my questions and approving what I had written on certain sensitive subjects.

So many ex-player interviews were also wonderfully candid and insightful. Former right-back and Holte End hero John Gidman met me along with his friends over a pint of lager – and a bottle or two of red in his case – in The Plough, situated in the pretty Staffordshire village of Shenstone. His dislike for Saunders was still clear so many years after. And Andy Gray’s comments were recorded over two phone interviews, such was the importance of what he had to say of his two spells with Villa as a player. He was speaking from Doha, Qatar, where he now works as a pundit for sports television network beIN Sports.

One final but not insignificant detail I would like to mention was how I managed to obtain secret boardroom minutes from the years that this book covers. Officials at the club, when Tom Fox was chief executive, allowed me to spend two full days in a cosy, book-cluttered, broom cupboard-like room above the ticket office in Aston Villa’s main car park, where I leafed through thousands of pages of club documents that related to the time I was writing about. They covered topics such as player sales, transfer targets, financial information and general club developments. It felt like I had stumbled upon artefacts that were being hidden from the public domain, as private club documents usually are, but which were begging to be written up to assist with the telling of this story. I am extremely grateful to Aston Villa Football Club for opening up this archive and enabling me to tell this story with much more accuracy than might otherwise have been possible.

Richard Sydenham, October 2018

Foreword by Andy Gray

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH THE HOLTE END WAS ONE OF THE MOST awesome things to happen to me as a footballer. I remember lots of games but one of the most vivid memories I have was a game I didn’t play in. I signed for Villa on Friday, 26 September 1975, and on the Saturday it was the Birmingham derby at Villa Park – which Villa won 2–1. I hadn’t a clue what to expect and had not even heard about the rivalry before. Remember, I was a Glasgow boy brought up watching Rangers and the big games I was accustomed to were the Rangers–Celtic clashes. So here I was, aged nineteen and with no idea what was about to hit me on that day. I came out of the tunnel and saw the old Witton Lane Stand but as I turned right to face the Holte End and walk up the touchline, this wall of claret and blue greeted me and the noise was incredible. There were more than 53,000 supporters present that day; the atmosphere was amazing and my eyes were popping out of my head. I thought, ‘I can’t wait to get into the team and play in front of this.’

I scored a header against Pat Jennings in the Tottenham goal in my first league game at home. From that point onwards there was a bond between me and the supporters. I always felt that what the Villa fans saw in me was themselves. They knew, even if I didn’t play well, that I wouldn’t have left that pitch without having given everything I had to the club. We both admired each other. I never worried about getting hurt or getting kicked in the face if I thought I could score a goal. It’s a pity more players today don’t feel the same. Players today are more frightened of getting hurt; I wasn’t. I used to joke, ‘Where there’s no sense, there’s no feeling!’ That’s why I put my head in where others wouldn’t. My job was to win games, to score goals and make the fans happy. That’s what I went out every Saturday or every Wednesday to try and do.

This book details the club’s incredible rollercoaster journey through the 1970s and 1980s, including the part I played in it. I left Villa acrimoniously to join Wolves in 1979 because I fell out with the manager Ron Saunders, but before we had those problems I learned so much at the club and loved my time there. The training was great and even when Ron wanted to leave the strikers out of his drills to organise his defence and midfield, I understood what he was trying to do. It is part of being young and learning your profession. I got all that at a very early age. I was happy to train every day with the coach Roy McLaren, Brian Little, John Deehan and maybe the reserve goalkeeper. You did sometimes feel out of it, but I understood the bigger picture. Ron was all about the team ethic and I bought into that ‘all for one and one for all’ mentality. We had some great times and I am sure you will enjoy reading in here about the glory days again, such as our 5–1 win over Liverpool when they were European champions, the League Cup wins in 1975 and 1977 and obviously the league championship and European Cup wins after I left.

People have asked me over the years whether I was envious about missing those successes. The answer: not at all. Villa did brilliantly. There were a lot of players there that I got on well with and who are still friends of mine. People like Gary Shaw, Peter Withe, Gordon Cowans. They deserved their success and worked hard for it. I wish it had been Wolves winning what they won, but it wasn’t to be.

That team was a good side that achieved amazing things – probably overachieved if I’m being honest. I think they would have found it really difficult to have emulated what they did that year. They had two fantastic seasons where things could barely have gone any better. Teams need a bit of luck to win big trophies and Villa had that – they never suffered many injuries and used only fourteen players when they won the league, which was a quite extraordinary feat. Even with Tony Barton as manager in the following season, after Ron Saunders’ departure, they won the European Cup, which was equally extraordinary.

The players that went should not have been irreplaceable. Gordon Cowans was a magnificent player – I love Sid – and Tony Morley was a huge part of that team, but I don’t think it was a case that they lost players. I think it was the case that they overachieved in the first place. Maybe that was the pinnacle. We were a bit like that at Everton in the mid-80s when we won the FA Cup, the league, the European Cup Winners’ Cup, then finished second in the league, then won the league again. So, Everton had a run of about four or five years – maybe twice as long as Villa – when they were very, very good and not too many players left and few came in. It’s not easy to recruit at Aston Villa and that has always been the case, while competing against the big boys. Villa maybe let it slip at a time when they shouldn’t have done.

I would expect anyone who was part of that team to believe that they could have had prolonged success if they had stayed together – but we will never know. I loved Shawsy and Sid Cowans, there’s no doubt they were exceptional players. Maybe they would have gone on and won a league again, but they never really got close again after that great season of 1980/81.

It’s just a shame that Villa haven’t been able to move on to that level again since, which is what this book will detail: how the club managed to rise to be European champions and then slip so suddenly from those heights.

I suppose the million-dollar question is this: can Villa ever return to those glory days of the early 1980s? Well, the summer of 2015 was a good measuring stick whereby over £50 million was spent on twelve players or more, but they lost their two best players, Christian Benteke and Fabian Delph. Was that ever going to make them a better team? No, and of course they were sadly relegated to the Championship. If Villa are ever to return to their glory days of challenging at home and in Europe it is going to take an astronomical investment to the tune of around £300 million on player recruitment over a number of seasons. To ever replicate their title-winning feats of 1980/81 would take years, huge investment and management skills that we haven’t seen for a long time.

Ultimately, Villa Park, in the middle of England with its great support – that place should be jumping every week. Villa fans like to see a certain brand of football: fast, attacking football and not frightened to have a go, which is how we tried to play under Saunders. Yes, you have to back off and defend, but when you get the ball, explode forward with pace and a cutting edge. The glory days have been away for too long but there’s always hope for the future. For now, you’ll have to make do with reading about them in here instead.

Andy Gray 210 Villa appearances, 78 goals

Doug Ellis and His Villa Revolution

‘It was an absolute disgrace what was going on – there was no money anywhere. There was very little to get excited about at Aston Villa other than representing the club and being part of its history.’ – Charlie Aitken

IT WAS JULY 2006 AND DOUG ELLIS WAS A CHAIRMAN ATTEMPTING to deal with a mutiny, two months before he sold Aston Villa for £62.6 million.

Dissatisfied players under the management of David O’Leary took the unusual step of leaking a statement to the media. They complained of a growing culture of frugality that was harming the club’s growth and limiting ambition. They listed cutbacks from significant ones like investment in the team and the scrapping of an £8 million renovation of their training facilities to smaller albeit just as frustrating examples, such as how the club had ceased paying for the team’s masseur, refusing to pay the £300 fee for watering the training pitch and even rejecting an expenses claim for a cup of coffee that the physiotherapist had purchased at an airport café en route to meeting a first-team player. Ellis, known in his early Villa days to tour the ground switching off lights before he left for home, was renowned for his keen eye towards the balance sheet, but these savings were clearly taking austerity to the extreme.

It must be said Ellis’s affection for and attachment to the club could rarely be questioned, irrespective of the thoughts of his detractors. His subsequent sale to American tycoon Randy Lerner would indicate that further investment in the club then would have been foolhardy on his part, even if this cost-cutting logic was seemingly taken too literally. Many fans were grateful for his ability to keep Villa in the black at times when other clubs were facing liquidation through overspending but, equally, fans were frustrated by his overly careful approach to ambition. Fans, staff and the players felt the club should have tried harder to compete with the traditional powerhouses of the domestic game.

So why is this unflattering farewell relevant at the start of this story? Quite simply: irony. It is ironic how journeys start, how they progress along the way and how they end. Ellis’s journey demonstrates the fickleness of football, when his initial positive influence is analysed, devoid of hindsight. However, his desire for control over or at least influence on the player transfers that contributed towards the club’s slide after winning the European Cup scarred his legacy. Ellis was instrumental in dragging the club up from the edge of oblivion in the late 1960s and early 70s, helping to set it on its way to being a European power. Yet, appreciation seemingly eroded over time, as Ellis’s time as either chairman or board member at Aston Villa Football Club would eventually number 36 years, after his first involvement in 1968.

So, what do we know of Herbert Douglas Ellis?

He was born on 3 January 1924, in the village of Hooton, Wirral. He lost his father when he was just three years old, due to pleurisy and pneumonia brought on by gas attacks sustained in the trenches during the First World War. He and his younger sister were then raised by his mother and this tough upbringing instilled in him a will to succeed in life through hard work. Ellis was a keen footballer in his youth but schoolboy trials with Tranmere Rovers were as far as his limited ability would take him – on the pitch. The closest he would ever come in those days to rubbing shoulders with the legends of the game he was so passionate about were occasional impromptu meetings with England great Tom Finney at a bus stop.

This was after Ellis’s work at the travel agency for Frame’s. It says much about the mentality of football stars of that generation that Ellis returned home after work one day to be told by his first wife that Finney – nicknamed ‘The Preston Plumber’ – had been atop their third-floor flat and fixed the leaking roof free of charge, after Ellis had casually spoken of it at the bus stop. His work at the travel agency impressed his boss Wallace Frame enough for him to be sent to Birmingham to manage a fresh enterprise at New Street Station. He arrived in 1948 and the city became his adopted home. Ellis outgrew Frame’s and he started his own operation, identifying the growth areas in the travel industry, exploiting the package holiday boom in the 1950s and 60s. Once settled in England’s second city, he started watching Aston Villa and Birmingham City matches to fuel his appetite for live football. By 1952 he was able to buy season tickets at both clubs, soon becoming a shareholder at Villa. In 1955 he secured shares in Birmingham City also. His association with City jumped to board member status by November 1965 courtesy of his flourishing business reputation locally and the contacts he was making. Curiously, Ellis had first been invited onto the Villa board earlier that year only to be blackballed by other directors who he felt were envious of his wealth and success. Instead, he lent his support to their fierce rivals.

‘You won’t experience any blackballing at this club, Doug,’ director Jack Wiseman told him. ‘We will be happy to have you.’ And his money, more to the point. Ellis would subsequently join Villa. He later considered his three-and-a-half years at Birmingham City an education in how not to run a football club.

‘Ever since I came down from the northwest in 1949, I was an Aston Villa man,’ Ellis insisted. ‘I had two season tickets and would watch Villa one week and Birmingham the next, or whoever was playing at home out of the two. I would work until twenty past one and then leave for the match. Even when I was on the board at Birmingham my thoughts and loyalty were always with Aston Villa. At Birmingham City, there was a general lack of energy, organisation and leadership, which was a reason why I left and also a huge lesson for when I joined the Villa board.’

In 1968, Manchester United, with the much-lauded talents of Bobby Charlton, George Best and Denis Law, became the first English club to win the European Cup, beating Portuguese heavyweights Benfica in the final. It was also the year Villa’s neighbours West Bromwich Albion won the FA Cup through a Jeff Astle goal and finished as the Midlands’ leading club in eighth place of the top tier. Events at Aston Villa at this time were far less auspicious. The team finished sixteenth in the old Second Division in the 1967/68 season, twelve places and fifteen points behind their bitter city rivals Birmingham. The next season followed a similar pattern.

If the team was struggling to be competitive on the pitch, the club was failing on a much greater scale off it. Villa Park was in total disrepair and the board did nothing. The supporters’ ire peaked on 9 November 1968 when they staged a protest against the board at Villa Park and in Birmingham’s city centre after Villa lost 1–0 at home to Preston North End, sending the team crashing to the foot of the table. Just 13,374 attended the match, comparing poorly to the 50,067 that had watched the Birmingham derby a year earlier. The fans had had enough and they railed against chairman Norman Smith, a director since 1939, and the board. The local Sunday Mercury newspaper reported the next day that one thousand supporters had entered the playing area after the game and gestured angrily towards the directors’ box. A police chief superintendent was quoted describing the events as the most violent protest of its type he had witnessed at the ground. The club had reached its nadir, certainly off the pitch.

Businessman Smith was once a local football referee and he cared about Aston Villa. His love for the club during his two years as chairman, though, was more like that of a passive custodian, bereft of any financial powers to make a difference in the improvement of the club on and off the park.

Enter self-made millionaire Ellis and his business associate and London merchant banker Pat Matthews, who would become club president while spearheading Villa’s renaissance by structuring the new board – though he was happy for Ellis to be the new face of Villa on a day-to-day basis.

Villa were desperately in need of a cash injection and new ideas to move forward. Unlike three years earlier, Ellis’s intervention and business acumen were now desired. And the role of Matthews, whose brainchild was a then-unprecedented share issue in the spring of 1969 that raised £205,835, should not be underestimated. That financial influx wiped out the old debt and powered the new Aston Villa towards a healthier future.

‘One of the problems at the Villa in the sixties was the board,’ explained Villa’s legendary left-back Charlie Aitken, who made a club-record 660 appearances from 1959 to 1976. ‘The board didn’t want to spend any money and none of the directors put any money into the club, which wasn’t being run properly. I could see that a mile away. We had a beautiful training ground that they sold to builders for something like £25,000. So we had to go to places like Delta Metals and Fort Dunlop and train at these factory grounds. Doug and Pat Matthews rejuvenated the club when it was on its knees. It was an absolute disgrace what was going on – there was no money anywhere. There was very little to get excited about at Villa other than representing the club and being part of its history.’

Goalscoring winger Harry Burrows further emphasised the point of how Villa’s frugality was hurting its development and reputation among the players. He helped Villa win the inaugural League Cup in 1961 with a goal in the two-legged final and continued to find the net frequently thereafter. But in the 1964/65 season he asked for a rise on his £20-a-week salary. The new manager Dick Taylor continually refused him until Burrows finally had enough and slapped in a transfer request. Taylor then offered him the raise, but it was too late – the damage was done. Stoke City, supposedly inferior to Villa, bought him and soon doubled Burrows’ wages. He became a hero with the Stoke fans for the next eight years. Villa’s frugal culture has been a common theme through the years.

Ellis became a director and chairman-elect at Villa Park on 17 December 1968, joining the club as part of a rescue operation. The old club was widely respected but mostly for its pre-war feats. It had won English football’s top league six times, but never since 1910. It had won the FA Cup seven times, but only once in almost fifty years. Villa’s lack of success on the pitch was a clear indictment and reflective of its off-field leadership. The club was edging towards bankruptcy when Ellis arrived. ‘You could write your name in the dust, window frames were rotting, the smell of failure and imminent financial ruin hung in the air,’ recalled Ellis. Even catering operations were inadequate. A favourite story from one frustrated club insider of the time recalled how a catering assistant refused to sell the last pie on a match day to a supporter because she was saving it for ‘a regular’. Things had to change.

The total assets of the club then, including the stadium and the land, were £203,770. Until the share issue, there were debts of over £200,000, while attendances had dropped alarmingly. Tougher times and relegation to the Third Division were almost inevitable, but Ellis was not to be deterred. He translated his business skills from the travel industry to football and was a pioneer in encouraging the football club to develop sophisticated hospitality boxes, starting in the Trinity Road Stand. He also resourced a public relations employee – Eric Woodward – because he felt Villa’s image needed improving in the regional and national eye. He contributed himself in that regard, announcing in his first press conference – with the bravado that marked his reign throughout – that he wanted Villa Park to become a 365-day-a-year multi-purpose stadium, adding, ‘I want Aston Villa to be another Real Madrid.’

While Ellis was notoriously egotistical, he was also commercially savvy in a way that benefitted Aston Villa hugely in those early days of financial recovery. His ravenous appetite for the club to generate income was never better displayed than when he struck a deal with local car sales outlet Bristol Street Motors. Ellis wrote in his autobiography ‘Deadly Doug’ that BSM agreed to pay the club £3,000 if the company’s advertising hoarding received at least three minutes of TV air time throughout the whole season. Prior to the final game, it looked as though the £3,000 would be lost due to a lack of brand exposure. Enter Ellis, who would rather have poked knitting needles in his eyes than lose £3,000 of advertising revenue. He addressed the players in an effort to ensure the camera’s attention was on a particular area of the pitch, where the advert was placed. Some managers would not have appreciated such distractive thoughts, but this was Doug Ellis and it was his club. So what happened? Winger Willie Anderson collapsed in a heap injured – supposedly – just in front of the relevant advert. The physiotherapist’s treatment was captured perfectly in front of the branding on television. Anderson earned a £100 bonus for his ingenuity and Villa banked the £3,000.

Once ensconced in his new project that was the rebirth of Aston Villa Football Club, Ellis invited Harry Kartz onto the board along with Harry Parkes, who had played for Villa between 1939 and 1955 before establishing an eponymous sports shop that became well-known in Birmingham. Kartz also had Villa in his heart, having been a supporter since his father took him along from an early age. ‘My first game was in 1919,’ a 101-year-old Kartz reflected at his Solihull home, shortly before his passing in 2016. ‘I well remember goalscorers like Pongo Waring and Billy Walker and Arthur Dorrell on the wing, Frank Barson at centre-half, goalkeeper Sam Hardy and Tommy Weston at left-back. I saw all the old players of that generation. Villa was in my blood. I later joined the shareholders’ association before Doug invited me onto the board, as we were friends from business. The club was having a bad time when I joined Doug. The finances weren’t good but Doug sorted it all out.’

Jim Hartley, a self-made businessman from the motor industry, and Bob Mackay, a successful estate agent, were also added to the board. Dick Greenhalgh, with an engineering background, came on in August 1971, lasting just a year on a persistently squabbling board.

The old regime had already sacked manager Tommy Cummings as the team veered towards relegation to the Third Division. Arthur Cox was installed as caretaker manager, before charismatic Scotsman Tommy Docherty became Ellis’s first manager after impressing Pat Matthews with his knowledge of the squad. The early interactions between Ellis and Docherty were amusing but laced with a hint of seriousness.

When Ellis inquired in his first meeting with Docherty why he wanted to manage Aston Villa, the manager-elect explained it was he who had been approached, by Pat Matthews, and not the other way around before ending his answer with ‘… Doug,’ to which Ellis replied, ‘Mr Chairman, if you don’t mind.’

‘You’re not the chairman yet,’ Docherty responded, swiftly. Ellis would soon take up the role.

As many a manager would later discover, there was only ever one winner when taking on Ellis. Immediately, attendances tripled and optimism grew with the dynamism of Ellis in the boardroom and the flamboyant, outspoken Docherty as manager. Docherty’s initial task was trying to keep Villa in the Second Division while also attempting to strengthen the squad on a limited budget. It was a tough ask. The signing of Bruce Rioch, who arrived in July 1969 along with his brother Neil in a joint deal for £100,000 from Luton Town after Villa had avoided relegation, suggested the club was willing to invest again.

‘Doug wanted to sign someone for £100,000,’ remembers secretary Alan Bennett, who had arrived from Chelsea, where he was assistant secretary during Docherty’s reign. ‘Doug would have signed me if I’d cost £100,000. I’m not saying the Rioch brothers weren’t worth it but Doug wanted to make a statement.’ Docherty also signed Ian ‘Chico’ Hamilton from Southend for £40,000 despite having sold him when he was Chelsea boss.

The successful bid for the Rioch brothers was Docherty’s eighth bid of £100,000 that summer, to emphasise his proactivity in the transfer market and the still-new board’s willingness to back him. He tried to prise Jimmy Greenhoff from Birmingham City and also Tommy Craig from Sheffield Wednesday, but Villa were not an attractive proposition to everyone.

Results in the 1969/70 campaign demonstrated how the situation had to worsen before real progress could be made. The first game of that season saw the debuts of Bruce Rioch, Hamilton and Pat McMahon, but Ron Saunders’ Norwich City team won 1–0. Results did not improve and Ellis showed early evidence of his ruthless streak when Docherty was fired after a 5–3 loss to Portsmouth on 17 January 1970, even though he was not even halfway through a three-year contract. He was the first of Ellis’s eleven eventual managerial sackings; the two other managers who served under him – Graham Taylor and Brian Little – resigned.

‘The Doc was a good manager but he wasn’t as good a coach, while Arthur Cox at that stage wasn’t a thinking coach either,’ Bennett believes. ‘I remember them being very optimistic in the summer I came in and after watching a pre-season friendly, Tom [Docherty] said, “What you think?” I told him I thought we would struggle. He didn’t share my view.’

Former Villa player and ex-Wales international Vic Crowe was appointed as Docherty’s successor in the month of his 38th birthday. Crowe had played at Villa for twelve years from 1952, and was on the staff as manager of the reserves. His initial four-month tenure resulted in relegation, but that time was long enough for the board to detect a general improvement in the team’s play and earn him a longer contract. Villa’s relegation in that 1969/70 season to the third tier of English football meant they had plummeted to the lowest point in their history. Never before had Villa played below the top two leagues, where they had to spend the next two seasons.

Out of darkness came light. During these desperate times there were encouraging signs that would help chart the club’s journey back towards the top.

Crowe was not the board’s preferred appointment but they realised with relegation looming and little money in the bank for new players, a higher-profile manager would not then have been attracted to Villa, so Crowe landed the job by default. Another former Villain, Ron Wylie, was hired as his assistant. Villa finished fourth in the 1970/71 season, missing out on the top two promotion places. The one major highlight was reaching the League Cup final at Wembley, having defeated Manchester United in the two-legged semi-final. The 2–0 loss to First Division side Tottenham Hotspur reflected little of Villa’s attacking threat and ball possession in the match. Ultimately, two Martin Chivers goals settled the game, which still represented progress as Villa chased better times.

Shrewd transfer activity powered the squad’s push for promotion back into the Second Division. Goalscoring winger Ray Graydon joined from Bristol Rovers in the summer of 1971, while Crowe also added the key signings of future captains and defenders Ian Ross from Liverpool and Chris Nicholl from Luton. These new recruits, made possible only because of the unexpectedly high gate receipts from Villa’s League Cup run, helped secure Villa the Third Division championship.

Crowe and Wylie saw goals in Graydon – whether he was scoring or creating them with his pinpoint deliveries from the right flank – and he would become a club legend with 81 goals in 232 appearances, collecting two League Cups along the way. Graydon had struggled to make a successful football career initially; he trained with Bristol City as a teenager yet they rejected him before he had a single first-team opportunity. Local rivals Bristol Rovers instead gave him his chance and he flourished thereafter. ‘I went up to Birmingham to meet Vic Crowe and Ron Wylie and signed for about thirty pounds a week but I would have signed for a penny,’ Graydon recalled. ‘I was just so overawed by the club. I’d never been there before and thought it was unbelievable to be wanted by a club that size. It was clear they were going places.’

Optimism had returned to Villa Park.