Midland Glory Days
When MOMS has a young lad and the question of who were the ‘Kings of the Midlands’ was raised, the principle candidates for the throne were always either Aston Villa or Nottingham Forest.
Both were clubs that piled up the trophies and had each won the League Cup, league title and European Cup within a five-year period from 1977-1982.
After Aston Villa had finished fourth and won the League Cup in 1977, Brian Clough’s newly promoted Nottingham Forest side took English football by storm during the 1977/78 season.
Not only did they win the League Cup, but they also became one of the rare teams to win the First Division title a year after promotion.
The next season, despite once again remaining unbeaten at home (they’d go onto suffer only one home defeat in three seasons), Forest finished second in the league to Liverpool, mainly due to drawing 10 of their 21 home games.
The reason for that, perhaps was due to the fact Forest’s focus was elsewhere – winning the European Cup.
It was a trick Clough repeated the following season, with Forest becoming back-to-back European Champions and matching Liverpool’s earlier achievement.
While Wolves managed to beat Forest in the 1980 League Cup final, Villa would soon overshadow that feat the next season winning the league title, before going on to also be crowned the Champions of Europe in 1982.
In four seasons, Forest had won the European Cup twice and Villa had won it once, so when the two teams played each other in the league, it was a big deal.
Fast-forward to the present day and the two teams playing against each other is the only clash of former European Champions outside the top-tier of any European league.
When Villa & Forest Ruled the World
The change in fortunes for both teams have been pretty dramatic over the decades and it’s a contrast of past and present that football video channel Copa ’90 wanted to capture in a new video.
Copa’90 contacted MOMS asking for people to guest in the video and we thought, who better than fans who travelled to Rotterdam in 1982 to the European Cup final to give their reflections on the change.
Video
Thanks to all the Villans who contacted MOMS about appearing in the video, we left it to Copa’90 to randomly choose a couple of supporters. A big thanks to both Dave Archer and Tim Bull for taking part. Nice job gents!
UTV
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