As Bad as Things Got: Aston Villa, 25th April 1936

With a flashy new manager, in 1934 Aston Villa were determined to get on their pedestal as one of England's most storied clubs. Two years later they were relegated.

It is fairly commonly assented these days that Aston Villa were one of the driving forces behind the game of football as we recognise it. With professionalism having been permitted by the FA in 1885, Villa’s William McGregor was the person to truly grasp that clubs who had to pay their players to pay needed a regular income stream which could not be guaranteed by an FA Cup run that could not be guaranteed every season, fleshed out by piecemeal friendly matches. McGregor’s innovation was the Football League, which began in 1888 and would become the template for the way in which the football season is scheduled throughout the world.

The year after professionalism was introduced, the club had been the first to appoint a “manager”, in the form of George Ramsey, but Ramsey’s position was just about unrecognisable in comparison with with way in which the position evolved. Ramsey was more commonly referred to as the club secretary, and team selection remained very much in the hands of the directors of the club. He stayed in this position until 1926, whereupon he was replaced by WJ “Billy” Smith, who took over for a further eight years, even taking the club to the runners-up spot in the First Division in both 1931 and 1933.