There aren’t too many firsts in football these days. However, on Sunday, under the Birmingham sun, there will be something new: for when Aston Villa host Nottingham Forest, it will be the first time two former European champions have faced each other in a second tier game.
Six teams with the European Cup in their trophy cabinets have been relegated – Manchester United, Juventus, Milan, Marseille and these two. All demoted either through incompetence or corruption, but never two from the same country in a lower division at the same time – until now. It is a unique achievement that neither Villa nor Forest should be especially keen to be reminded of – both proud of their history – but those successes, in 1979 and 1980 in Forest’s case and 1982 for Villa, are looming reminders, cast in silver, of how they have fallen.
There will be echoes of the Champions League elsewhere, too: Villa’s manager, Roberto Di Matteo, won it with Chelsea in 2012, and the new Forest signing Nicklas Bendtner has played in the competition in seven of the past nine seasons. There is even what used to be Champions League money in the air, with a potential Villa forward line that set them back around £25m in Ross McCormack and Jonathan Kodjia, who were purchased with the intent of returning to the Premier League, post-haste. Forest have recruited 12 players for their new manager, Philippe Montanier, but in big money terms were on the other side of transactions, selling the young winger Oliver Burke to RB Leipzig for £13m. Safe to say life in this division is nothing like it was when these two clubs last met in it, back in 1975.
Then, as now, that was a time of flux for the clubs. Villa had just won the League Cup, beating Norwich in the final and were on their way to promotion, finishing second behind United who, to bring things back to where we started, were the first former European champions to suffer relegation. Forest, meanwhile, had just started life under a new manager, Brian Clough’s modest beginnings (they finished 16th that season) giving no clue to the glories ahead.
One man who spans both eras for Villa is Brian Little. A scorer in that 1975 game (Villa won 3-2), when he retired after a 10-year playing career he worked in the club shop, sold lottery tickets, eventually became a youth team coach and then, finally, manager, in 1994. “There can’t be too many people who’ve done as much as I have at a single club,” he says. He is now an adviser to the new board and has drawn on his long experience to try to help Villa out of the division at the first attempt.
“I keep reminding them that back in 1969 we went into the Third Division, and I was part of a group that got it right,” he says. “I try to stir that belief inside the club now. The new owners want to feed off that and look back to anything they can relate to and that has some similarity to now. It was an incredible period because the club came from its lowest point ever, back up to its highest.”
Even if a rise from second tier to European champions seems implausible now, they are certainly aiming as high under the new owner, Tony Jiantong Xia. The Chinese businessman, who bought the club from Randy Lerner in the summer, has said he wants Villa to be one of the top three clubs in the world in less than 10 years. Ambitious, perhaps overly so, but you cannot fault his enthusiasm.
“The last year or two, the fans hadn’t seen enough of their owner,” says Little. “Tony has said that Randy is a perfectly decent bloke and I echo those sentiments even though it didn’t work for him. He just lost that frontman position that a club needs.”
Xia seems perfectly willing, if not eager, to take on that role and seems to be broadly popular with many Villa fans. “The Birmingham people have a bit of an edge to them,” says Little, “and [they like] having someone who’s prepared to answer someone back, no matter who they are. He’s the sort of person who enjoys it when things go well, but when they don’t he’s quite hurt and emotional about it. That’s the sort person the club needs.”
Promotion is the aim for Villa and Forest, who have been out of the top flight since 1999, the first step on an admittedly unlikely path towards repeating the successes of the past. “Once Villa get back on a roll, we’ve got every chance of getting back up there, and I’m sure Forest people feel the same,” says Little. “I believe Villa will rise back up, without a doubt.”
