It probably says a lot about Aston Villa’s slightly lopsided history that the last time they won the FA Cup the pictures were in black and white, the team wore stripes and it was Kenneth Wolstenholme’s voice that could be heard making light of that incident early on when Peter McParland charged down Manchester United’s goalkeeper, Ray Wood, in the manner of a runaway bull and a Pamplona tourist.
“That was a fair charge but unfortunately their heads collided and both McParland and Wood are out,” Wolstenholme said about arguably the most brutal challenge Wembley had witnessed before a pumped-up, studs-flying Paul Gascoigne was let loose in 1991. Wood was carried off, unconscious with a smashed cheekbone, and to add insult to injury it was the instigator of those injuries who scored both goals in a 2-1 win. “Rather silly booing from some of the Manchester spectators every time McParland gets the ball,” the commentator observes.
The pictures of the 1957 final line the walls at Villa Park alongside those of the night, a quarter of a century later, when Tony Barton’s team travelled to Rotterdam to face Bayern Munich in the European Cup final. Outside, the banner running along the North Stand has the all-important line of commentary. “There’s a good ball in for Tony Morley. Oh, it must be! And it is! Peter Withe!” Villa have always been a club to embrace their past. It is just sometimes a football club can cling to the memories because the present day offers so little in comparison.
Tim Sherwood will make that point to his players at Wembley on Saturday: that it is time they created some new history and changed the club’s mentality. “It’s been too long,” he said, when reminded it was 58 years since Villa last won this trophy. That was their seventh success in the competition, surpassed only by Arsenal and Manchester United with 11 and Tottenham Hotspur with eight. Arsène Wenger can equal a 95-year-old record by winning the cup for the sixth time as a manager and the man he would join is George Ramsay, whose successes at Villa came from 1887 to 1920. There is rich history here but, for Sherwood, the emphasis is “to give the club a platform to move on”. His arrival this year helped to steer them away from relegation but they still finished fourth from bottom of the Premier League and Roy Keane was only half-joking on his book tour last November when someone asked what he had made of his time at Villa. “Not so much a sleeping giant,” Keane, then assistant manager to Paul Lambert, said. “More like one in a coma.”
Sherwood’s hope is this could be the stick to raise the giant. “There’s no getting away from the fact this club has got a losing mentality,” he said. “People keep looking at the players and saying they shouldn’t be where they are in the league. Yet they are there for a reason and four years on the spin down there is because something is wrong with the mentality.”
He has said more than once they will be “huge underdogs” but there is also a sense that beating Liverpool in the semi-final has removed any sense of inferiority. “They [Arsenal] have players who are world-class and can win games on their own,” Sherwood said. “You give special attention to some of them but I don’t think they are all world-class. There are areas where they are weak, or weaker than their strong points.”
At the same time, Sherwood is an ardent admirer of Wenger, uncomfortable with some of the treatment the Arsenal manager has received in the past couple of seasons. “You have to be careful what you wish for as a fan. For me he’s done a tremendous job. If you line up the chairman and every director in a football club they all want a Wenger. Maybe Chelsea and Manchester City might be an exception because they’ve got gazillions of pounds to throw at it, but if you want a sustainable business Arsène Wenger is a great model of that. I don’t think anyone should be criticising Arsène Wenger. You can criticise Tim Sherwood all you want.”
Sherwood was meant to be on holiday this week but after reaching the final he had to leave his wife, Mia, and their children to go on their own. “My little girl went to the semi-final and said: ‘I hope you lose because then you can take me swimming.’” The family are coming back a day early to be at Wembley and, for Villa, the potential prize is not only the FA Cup but a place in Europe.
Sherwood was asked whether he would actually want a place in the Europa League bearing in mind the way it clutters up the fixture list. “If you are asking me whether I would have that headache next year because I’ve walked up those steps and lifted that cup, I’ll take that all day.”
