Aston Villa, Jack Grealish and magical moments that matter
In which I reluctantly accept that I’ve probably forgiven Jack Grealish
The disintegration of Gillette Soccer Saturday into a beacon of casually toxic right-wing ladpolitik would be fascinating if it weren't so utterly bloody miserable.
It's supposed to be live football coverage without the football, Sky Sports’ 3pm blackout workaround to service the deep-rooted culture of football supporterhood in England.
For various reasons over the years, perhaps most importantly the passing of the years in itself, Soccer Saturday has changed. Of course it has. That's what happens.
The loss of some familiar but stale pundits was apparently too much for some of those supporters to handle but the departure of tinfoil hat-wearing culture warrior manchild CBD shill Matt Le Tissier kicked the laughable accusations of wokery into overdrive.
God forbid somebody other than a middle-aged white ex-pro/moron get a seat in front of a screen on a Saturday afternoon. It's political correctness gawn maaaahd!
On Saturday, Caroline Barker presented the show in the role vacated by Jeff Stelling. Stelling became part of the football furniture in England during his time in the chair and, consequently, a big part of football culture – for better and for worse.
He also became a symbol of Soccer Saturday's supposed disappearance down some sort of lefty wokehole. Inevitably, the appearance of a woman(!), even one who didn't even replace him directly, yielded a poisonous response upon which I sadly stumbled on Sunday morning.
I didn't watch the show because I go to football on Saturdays and because it's outmoded and shit anyway.
But Caroline Barker was a guest on my podcast a very long time ago, and (off-air as well as on) she was among the most impressive and dauntingly informed of all the people who appeared on it. She was a powerhouse then and she's worked in football ever since.
That Soccer Saturday has become a political battleground is a ludicrous indictment of what England has become. It's been nice to see some positive responses as well, and it seems Barker was brilliant at short notice because of course she was.
Sadly, for thousands of increasingly isolated and vocal men in the audience, that doesn't appear to be the point.
Aston Villa, Jack Grealish and magical moments that matter
Football supporters in England love to talk about history. From all-time records to romantic notions of football's distant past, tradition and nostalgia are woven into the very fabric of the sport.
History can be a loaded term. Manchester City and Chelsea are lazily accused of having none because of the artifice of their modern successes, as if Malcolm Allison and Peter Osgood never happened. It's a barb and a bullet, munition because it matters.
When Aston Villa supporters talk about history, they really do mean history. Villa are one of the English game's great names, their status built entirely on success just like anybody else's.
Villa have won the European Cup but they did it before the release of E.T. They've won the FA Cup seven times but Peter McParland scored both goals in the final last time they did.
Of Villa's seven league titles, six were won by George Ramsay. The Glaswegian was Villa's first manager, such as it was in the Victorian era, and his team's last championship was in 1910.
In other words, Villa's heritage has its origins in football's formative years. A league title in 1981, the European Cup in 1982, the European Super Cup in 1983 and a bunch of League Cups are all they have to show for their trials and tribulations since McParland's controversial Wembley brace in 1957.
But all of our clubs have made special memories. Whether they deliver silverware or not, they mean more to us than 19th Century titles or FA Cup wins while Walter Winterbottom still ran the England team. The enjoyment we get from those moments is why we keep coming back, keep watching our teams muddle and meander along, going nowhere until they suddenly go somewhere.
Villa are no exception. European nights are a part of their modern social history despite not playing in the Champions League or getting anywhere near the UEFA Cup final. Two League Cup wins in the 1990s were celebrated with gusto and gave a whole new generation of supporters a taste of the glory they'd been told was in the club's blood.
These memories matter. 1994 and 1996 don't count for less because Villa only won the Coca-Cola Cup. But they might have been overshadowed in 2019, when Villa went back to the same venue – the rebuilt version of which had brought near total misery up to that point – and saved their skins.
Villa had come a long way in a short time just to end up back where they were a year earlier. In 2018 a tame performance in the Championship Play-Off final allowed a single Fulham goal to condemn Steve Bruce’s Villa team to another year in the second tier and that was the tip of the iceberg in terms of the club’s future.
The 2017/18 final felt existentially important. Even getting there was a shaky business, Villa’s expensive yet patchwork team boasting enough individual quality to reach the final but failing to show up when it mattered. Villa’s ownership was showing signs of disintegration and their finances were unravelling. They had to win and they didn’t.
One year on, Bruce had gone and Villa had been taken over. They roared into the play-offs rather than stumbling over the line. Ten league wins in a row gave them confidence and united a notoriously fractious support behind a team full of players who suited the club and the moment. Several were on loan and Villa tried to make most of them permanent.
Tyrone Mings, Axel Tuanzebe, Anwar El Ghazi and Tammy Abraham felt right in a way John Terry and Lewis Grabban never did. John McGinn, a permanent signing, ended up taking over from Mings as Villa’s captain.
But what propelled Villa through 30 unanswered points and promotion back to the Premier League was a potent pairing in the team leadership.
Dean Smith was appointed as manager in November 2018 after success with Walsall and Brentford. Smith is Villa through and through but arrived with some managerial pedigree. His new captain was Jack Grealish, also a Villa man, who was in the process of graduating from youthful phenom to one of England’s premier football talents.
Smith and Grealish, in that place and at that moment, were the perfect combination. Two Brummie Villans came together to make magic and it culminated in a visceral, guttural explosion of destiny at the home of football.
There was a palpable difference between Villa’s play-off finals in 2018 and 2019. The former was about pressure. Tension hung thick in the air. Defeat, it was thought, could easily lead to disaster. Villa couldn’t afford to be outside the Premier League any longer.
The latter was about business. Villa supporters arrived at Wembley with a sense of focus. This wasn’t a day out. It was in, win, out. Derby County were the opposition and their supporters had the same look about them as had Villa a year earlier – with, it turns out, just cause.
Smith and Grealish were Villa’s driving force and both pulled their weight at Wembley but Mings and Tuanzebe were superb at the back. El Ghazi’s headed goal was the pinnacle of his time at Villa. McGinn’s tenacious second made the game safe and, despite a goal back for Derby, it never seemed likely to end up any other way.
Villa were promoted in the best possible manner, with a sentimental manager and captain leading the way. When the final whistle blew under the arch, years of decline and disappointment gushed from the stands and away into the past.
Smith’s Villa staged a remarkable escape to avoid relegation back out of the Premier League in their first season back. Behind closed doors on the other side of the covid shutdown, Villa turned their fortunes around not because of a technological error but a string of results that had looked unlikely in the old normal.
There followed a mid-table finish in a 2020/21 season with some quite extraordinary highlights, albeit still in the bizarre covid hinterland that took yet more games behind closed doors to be played with the voice of Mings booming around the empty stadium.
Grealish was at the height of his powers at last and Villa now had real quality around him. Statement victories over Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United were reinforced by a defeat of Chelsea on the final day and notable wins at Leicester City, Leeds United and West Bromwich Albion.
Neither Smith nor Grealish stayed much longer. Smith was sacked in November 2021 with his team falling short of the same standard, later struggling to find the same spark at Norwich City and then Leicester City.
By the time Smith left Villa his captain was long gone. Grealish was sold to Manchester City for £100m and his move became one of the many fault lines along which supporter opinion splits. Reviled by some and revered by others, one suspects the fullness of Grealish's Villa legacy will only be established in retirement.
The emotional intensity of Villa’s promotion will eventually be diluted by the passing of time. Without the benefit of recency it will fall down the historical pecking order. But it shouldn’t be overlooked because it was achieved away from the top level, or because Smith unfortunately ran out of road, or because Grealish chose to leave and alienated some supporters in doing so.
Smith and Grealish mattered. They mattered like Ron Atkinson and Brian Little, like Dean Saunders and Dalian Atkinson and Kevin Richardson, like Dwight Yorke and Ian Taylor and Andy Townsend, because they did something. For those who were there, the size of the triumph relative to others is meaningless.
There’s a temptation to dismiss Smith and Grealish’s claret and blue allegiances and Brummie backgrounds as irrelevant. After all, their abilities and personalities took Villa back into the Premier League, not their accents.
For supporters those backgrounds were everything. Players and managers come and go. Some succeed, most do not. Some assimilate into the culture of the club, many do not. Supporters warm to people from all places, all backgrounds, who come into their clubs and get it.
But Smith’s management and Grealish’s captaincy of Villa were extra special. Two supporters at the top of their game coincided with one another to form a tremendous bond and carried their club – our club – away from the doldrums. If the essence of football could be bottled, magical moments like this would be its scent.
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“Through all the ups and downs he maintained the facade of the chirpy cockney with a knowing grin. His personality suited the headline writers of the tabloid newspapers, who greeted his move to Barcelona in 1984 by naming him El Tel.”
From The Guardian’s obituary for the late Terry Venables. Rest in peace, El Tel. One of a kind.
Salty beef extracts
The Tottenham Buckaroo is at risk of imploding (i)
Aaron Ramsdale nightmare shows Mikel Arteta’s man management has failed (i)
On the cards: are soaring sendings-off a Premier League trend or an outlier? (The Guardian)
Ethnic and gender diversity targets are only first step on road to fairer football (The Guardian)
Premier League appears fractured as external pressures continue to mount (The Guardian)
‘For me it’s like a movie’: the fall, fightback and rise of Belenenses (The Observer)
Frank Soo: England's pioneer who died with a tale untold (BBC Sport)
Dessert
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