Deciding they couldn’t not play him in Ireland, McGrath walked on the pitch but when trying to take a freekick, Macca ended up taking an air shot.
“I’d seen enough and shouted; tell Paul his ankle is hurting and he’s coming off,” then manager Ron Atkinson remembers. Atkinson gets a lot of “airtime” in “Nobody remembers Second” as does a lot of other Villa legends. The book is an excellent account of a period where Aston Villa came agonisingly close to the title, only to finish second twice inside four years. Full of stories like the above-mentioned or like this one from Josef Venglos’ catastrophic one-year reign.
“He went on for five minutes about how Gareth Williams had a crucial role in the game. Then Stuart Gray put his hand up and said; ‘Boss, you haven’t picked a goalkeeper, you’ve got 11 outfield players’,” to which Venglos promptly replied; ‘Oh yes, Gareth, you sit this one out’.
Hilarious, as Venglos’ entire reign almost turned out to be if it wasn’t for the fact Villa almost got relegated. The Czech was the first foreign manager at an English top tier club and tried implementing such heretic thoughts as eating healthy food and not drinking alcohol! What Arsene Wenger was hailed for as a revolutionary some years later, Venglos had already tried in Birmingham.
Two other managers had more successful spells at Villa Park although they were very different characters.
“Graham Taylor came at a very difficult time for Villa in 1987, just after a relegation. He came in from Watford which is not the biggest of clubs in England, but they were in a much better place than Aston Villa at the time,” author of “Nobody remembers Second”, Richard Sydenham tells Tribalfootball.
“He had an unfair reputation of being a long-ball manager, but we played some real vibrant, exciting football under Taylor. So, he was a good manager who took a lot of replacing when he became the England manager. Then, after Venglos, Big Ron Atkinson came in. Very different style, a lot more charisma but players wanted to play for him. He had that pedigree behind him of being at a big club, Manchester United, and winning a couple of FA Cups. He even won the League Cup at Sheffield Wednesday and he managed to bring a lot of big names to Villa that most fans would never have expected to join.”
Best player an alcoholic
The aforementioned Paul McGrath was already at Villa Park when Big Ron arrived and the Irishman performed as brilliantly for him as he did for Taylor. He was Aston Villa Player of the Season for four years on the bounce from 1990 to ’93 and even won PFA Players Player of the Season in 1993. All while never training!
“I wasn’t overwhelmed when Villa bought him from Man United, I just thought, ‘OK, it's a solid signing’, and I don't think I was alone with that attitude. I don't think any of us realised then how good that signing was going to be,” Richard Sydenham says, distinctly recalling a specific match in ‘89.
“The 6-2 win over Everton on 5 November was when Villa just clicked as a team and I think that was where we saw McGrath come into his own. He hasn’t got the big reputation of other great defenders, but if anybody asked me to name my World XI of all time, I would always have Paul McGrath in there. He had two great World Cups and he was immaculate for Villa for five or six years,” states Sydenham.
Not only did McGrath never train, he was also an alcoholic, making his achievements for Aston Villa mind-boggling. You won’t find a fellow player with a bad word to say of McGrath and everyone accepted his absence during the week as they all knew he was one of the best come matchday. If not the best, as he was most of the time and his pairing with Shaun Teale was one of the best ever for Villa.
“I was brought up on the team that won the league and European cup in 81-82 with the Scottish pair of Alan Evans and Ken McNaughton in defence. That would probably always be Villa's most famous back line of central pairings. But Teale and McGrath were a fantastic partnership,” Sydenham says of the pair who Villa collected for £650,000 in total.
Speaking of great pairings, you’d be hard pressed to find two better striking partners than Dalian Atkinson and Dean Saunders from the ‘93 team.
“That season there probably wasn't a better strike force than those two. Atkinson had a bit of a reputation for being lazy, but players didn't mind because he was capable of mercurial things on a football pitch. He was a powerhouse, had tremendous skill, and Dean Saunders did his running for him. He was a workhorse but also a prolific goal scorer so they really worked well together. It was probably the best pairing since Peter Withe and Gary Shaw 10 years earlier,” Sydenham believes.
Martinez the main difference
Overseeing it all was chairman and owner Doug Ellis, known among “friends” as “Deadly Doug”. A proper character with a penchant for exaggerating.
“He's famous for speaking up his own importance, like claiming he was the one who discovered Dwight Yorke, which was such nonsense. Graham Taylor was very good at playing his game, so the speak, Atkinson less so. He loved the Villa to be honest, he loved being chairman of Aston Villa and I think generally he should have a good reputation but there'll always be a lot of people who think about his role in the early 80s,” acknowledges Sydenham who has covered that period for Aston Villa previously in the book “Ticket to the Moon”.
Aston Villa played some of the best football seen in the Premier League under Ron Atkinson. As one who has been around Villa Park since the club last won the title, does Sydenham believe they would have beaten Unai Emery’s current side?
“There's very little between the two teams. There’s probably a bit more potential in Emery's team because they're a bit younger. Players like McGrath, Tony Daley, Spink, Saunders, Teale, none of them were young. There's a bit more youth in Emery's team and probably more potential. The one major difference for me though is I think Emiliano Martinez right now is the best keeper in the world.”With Villa once again riding high in England and in Europe, who knows where the current side will end up and whether their story will be told 30 years down the line. After all, “Nobody remembers Second” as Richard Sydenham’s title states, but he’s made a brilliant attempt at trying to change that.
“I always felt that those teams under Graham Taylor and Big Ron easily could have been held in the same regard as the ’81 side if they'd just got over that final hurdle and won the league. Both fell short but I still thought it was a good story to be told.”
It is and “Nobody remembers Second” is out now at Pitch Publishing and available at assorted bookshops, at the Pitch Publishing website or right here.
