History of Aston Villa F.C. (1961–present)
He was replaced by his assistant manager Tony Barton who guided them to 1–0 victory over Bayern Munich in the European Cup final in Rotterdam.
After 23 years as chair and largest shareholder, owning approximately 38% of the club, Doug Ellis decided to sell his stake to Randy Lerner, the owner of the NFL franchise Cleveland Browns.
The arrival of a new owner and manager marked the start of sweeping changes throughout the club, including a new crest, a new kit sponsor and new players in the summer of 2007.
They sacked Bruce and appointed Dean Smith, who led the team back to the Premier League with victory in the 2019 EFL Championship play-off final.
Despite finishing fourth in the Third Division in the 1970–71 season, Villa reached the League Cup final after beating Manchester United in the semi-final.
At the end of his first season in charge, Villa were back in the First Division after finishing second, and won the 1975 League Cup final at Wembley Stadium.
Villa won their first League Championship in 71 years, fighting off competition from Liverpool and Ipswich Town using only 14 playing staff in the season.
As of November 2020, Villa remain one of only five English teams to have won the European Cup, along with Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and Nottingham Forest.
At the annual general meeting in October 1982, it was revealed that the club were £1.6 million in debt, mainly due to escalating wages and building costs, including the construction of the North Stand.
Their second-place finish the previous season earned them qualification for the UEFA Cup as one of the first English clubs to enter European competition after the ban resulting from the Heysel Stadium disaster was lifted.
At the end of the 1993–94 season, they played their last game at a terraced Villa Park before it was converted over the summer to an all-seater stadium to comply with the Taylor Report.
[31] Leicester City's manager Brian Little was forbidden to speak to Aston Villa by his board, after rumours began circulating that Ellis wanted to hire him.
Although maintaining he had not spoken to Ellis about the possibility of taking over at Villa, Little resigned from his post at Leicester even though he was contracted to the club until the end of the 1997–98 season.
[34] In February 1998, with Villa standing 15th in the Premiership, and speculation rife that he would be sacked, Little resigned, stating that, "There were certain things going on behind the scenes which were affecting my own managerial position.
Despite the £12.6 million sale of Dwight Yorke, a player who had scored 97 goals in 287 appearances for the club, to Manchester United in August 1998, John Gregory had guided Aston Villa to the top of the Premiership by the middle of the 1998–99 season.
He took the team to sixth in the table, with a 2–0 home defeat against Manchester United on the final day meaning that they narrowly missed out on a UEFA Cup place.
The poor placing came despite O'Leary having spent more than £13 million the previous summer on players like as Milan Baroš, Kevin Phillips and Wilfred Bouma.
[41] Frustration within the club soon reared its head when, on 14 July 2006, a group of Villa players criticised Ellis's alleged parsimony and lack of ambition in an interview with a local newspaper.
[42] The club immediately dismissed the report as "ridiculous", but it emerged over the following few days that a group of senior players had indeed instigated the move, possibly with O'Leary's backing.
[51][52] Aston Villa started the 2006–07 Premiership campaign well,[53] with Olof Mellberg scoring the first competitive goal at Arsenal's new Emirates Stadium.
A victory against Danish side Odense BK, over two legs in the final during the summer of 2008, put Villa into European competition for the 2008–09 season for the first time in seven years.
They reached the group stage of the UEFA Cup that season with relative ease, and played their first match against Dutch club Ajax at Villa Park, winning 2–1.
[68][69] Despite saving them from relegation the previous season, Sherwood was fired[70] on 15 October 2015, after six consecutive league losses, with Kevin MacDonald taking the role of interim manager.
On 2 November 2015, Frenchman Rémi Garde agreed to a three-and-a-half-year deal to become the manager,[71] but he left on 29 March 2016 with the club rooted to the bottom of the table.
[78] Following the play-off final financial problems began to emerge with Xia struggling to move money out of China to maintain basic football operations.
[79] On 5 June 2018, Aston Villa missed the deadline for a £4 million tax bill, and the club was faced with a winding up order and the real possibility of going out of business.
[85] The club spent a net total of £144.5 million to bring in 12 players in the summer 2019 transfer window ahead of their Premier League return: Jota, Anwar El Ghazi, Wesley, Kortney Hause, Matt Targett, Tyrone Mings, Ezri Konsa, Björn Engels, Trézéguet, Douglas Luiz, Tom Heaton and Marvelous Nakamba.
[95] The January transfer window saw Gerrard sign high profile names in Philippe Coutinho on loan from Barcelona, and Lucas Digne for £25m from Everton, but results in the new year were mixed with Villa winning three games in a row to Brighton, Southampton and Leeds, to then lose four games in a row to West Ham, Arsenal, Wolverhampton, and Tottenham.
The 2022–23 season did not begin in better fashion, with summers signings Boubacar Kamara and Diego Carlos each suffering lengthy injuries early into the campaign, and Villa would win only one of their first six games.
[110] The new leadership oversaw a summer of recruitment which saw Aston VIlla break it's transfer record on the signing of French winger Moussa Diaby from Bayer Leverkusen for a reported £51.9m.
