The history of Aston Villa Football Club (I seem to have known for centuries) is like no other football club. And that’s a lot to do with the reason why — at the start of 2006 — I set about researching the club’s earliest days in all the printed matter that I could find.

It took some finding over the best part of four years. But, as can probably be imagined, the difficulties of finding the information was outweighed by the enormous satisfaction and pleasure in gradually piecing it together!

The result of that research has already been made manifest in detail in “The Aston Villa Chronicles 1874-1924 (and after)” which is still on sale at the club’s stores. For more details, please go to my page on the matter at this LINK

I produced such a detailed account of those 50+ years because the exciting information in it is not easily obtainable in one place anywhere else. Someone else would otherwise have to go through precisely the same research that I went through.

Villa’s history (of course) now spans more than 130 years, so ‘The Chronicles’ only goes so far. So now, I have another revelation.

I feel that what is still missing is a complete history of the Villa that covers all the club’s years, though not going into the same amount of detail as in ‘The Chronicles’. The research has started again.

The series of articles about the 1960s and 1970s I have recently been posting on this site is a mere flavour of what is to appear in a new complete history which will be called “Aston Villa – The First Superclub”, and it will focus on the 130 years between the arrival of George Ramsay in 1876 and the effective departure of Doug Ellis in 2006. Also included will be a preface covering the 1874-1876 period and a review of the period since 2006.

Rob Bishop’s soon-to-appear “Complete Record” is, of course, primarily a statistical history which should be complementary to “Aston Villa – The First Superclub”.

Please note that it is not intended for this book to be a replacement for ‘The Chronicles’, which I regard as being a different kind of production. ‘The Chronicles’ covers the first 50 years in two volumes; “Aston Villa – The First Superclub” will appear as one (thick) volume and will be more affordable.

I had hoped to have “Aston Villa – The First Superclub” published in time for this Christmas, but there is still a lot of work to do on it, including further research, so I am now aiming for Easter, 2011.

Please keep an eye on my work-in-progress page at http://www.lerwill-life.org.uk/allbooks.htm . I will be updating this web-page at the end of each month with the status on this book and other publications I intend to produce over the next year or two.

Many thanks for your interest and your supportive comments to date, and to Ian for his accommodation of me on this, his blog. It all helps and is greatly appreciated!

Up the Villa!

John Lerwill