The Villa faithful had gone away during the summer and talked about all the marvellous possibilities that were now at the club’s fingertips. Everything was buzzing around Villa Park, and the team had gone off to the USA during the summer to play there in a mini tournament as the guests of Atlanta.

Promotion back to Division One in the upcoming season? Of course it would be possible! Tommy Docherty played to the gallery in marvellous style and when he went out and bought the young Rioch brothers – Bruce and Neil – for £115,000, plus Ian Hamilton for another £40,000, and a useful Pat McMahon from Celtic (free), expectations began to go sky high, in line with the achievement of the first Moon walk by Alan Shepard in that July.

The actual start to the season was a thorough anti-climax. Wearing a completely new kit, designed to cast the past well into the past, Villa had their now usual awful start and again did not achieve their first win until late September, their 10th game. From then until mid-November, it began to look as though the ship had been steadied, but then came a calamitous 0-5 defeat at Sheffield United, and just a few games later a 3-5 defeat – at home – against Portsmouth, with no wins in between. Villa were rooted at the bottom of the division in mid-January and there was division in the dressing room; that was the end for Docherty, 12 months after he had moved in to a huge acclaim.

The reasons for the failure have since been put down to two issues. The first that Docherty put the players through such a punishing pre-season training programme that they were exhausted before the season had begun. The second was that the expectation was so very high, and the players acutely felt that pressure.

The fortune for Villa – as it turned out – was that the club’s old captain, Vic Crowe, had returned from the USA in the autumn and had joined Docherty’s coaching staff. Vic was thus appointed as Docherty’s successor, and he, in turn, brought in his old playing compatriot Ron Wylie, effectively as his assistant manager.

The two complemented one another perfectly and at least they were able to call on a decent set of players. In fact, the new management made very few adjustments to the team right through to the end of the season – the major exception being the purchase of striker Andy Lochhead. But the new bosses were immediately checked at the end of January by a broken leg to one of the better players that season – Dave Rudge. He was a small nippy winger who had been in and out of the first-team for about three seasons, but this season seemed to be making a significant impact. He did not make it back to the first-team and spent the next season in the reserves.

Crowe was quick to make a modification to the shirt introduced by Docherty the previous year. It had been all-claret except for the collar, but under Crowe the light-blue sleeves were re-introduced. The shirt design was still light years away from the traditional designs, however, but was in keeping with the times, which were all about modernity and a new age.

It was the motivational factor that really needed working on, but there was a lot of ground to make up in a very small amount of time, and when (after winning at St. Andrews) Villa went to Leicester, what happened that night rather typified the lack of luck that they had that season.

I was living at Leicester at that time and was able to get to the match very easily. What I saw was astonishing as I was right behind Pat McMahon’s wonderful shot as it flew towards Peter Shelton’s net, but then hit the stanchion and came straight back out into Shilton’s hands. It had been a ‘goal’, but because the stanchions were so short, the referee and his linesman had been fooled by the speed of it all and thought the ball had hit the post! While Villa were celebrating, Shilton kicked the ball downfield where a Leicester forward zipped onto the clearance and put the ball into the Villa net without any attempt by the Villa at stopping him.

Within a few seconds, Villa had seemed to have gone 1-0 up, but in fact they were 0-1 down! That was how the match finished and that was the match that made a big difference. Shortly afterwards, Leicester City altered the depth of their goal stanchions.

Despite winning their next (also the last) two matches, Villa’s recovery had come too late. Unthinkably, Villa were relegated to Division Three, in company, as it happened, with another great team from the Victorian era – Preston.

How would Villa be able to recover in time to properly celebrate their centenary just four years afterwards?

© 2010 John Lerwill

Next week: The Third Division – Villa’s Nadir