30th Anniversary Infographic: 1980/81: The Fourteen

It was 30 years ago today that Aston Villa last won a league title when we were crowned English Champions despite losing our final game in a season that went to the wire.

If you had glanced at the old First Division table on the morning of May 2nd 1981 you’d have seen the top half looking like this:

1980/81
Pld
W
D
L
GF
GA
GD
Pts

Aston Villa
41
26
8
7
72
38
34
60

Ipswich
40
23
10
7
74
38
36
56

Arsenal
41
18
15
8
59
45
14
51

Notts Forest
41
19
11
11
61
43
18
49

West Brom
40
19
11
10
56
40
16
49

Southampton
41
19
10
12
73
54
19
48

Man Utd
42
15
18
9
51
36
15
48

Liverpool
39
15
17
7
59
40
19
47

Tottenham
41
14
15
12
68
64
4
43

Leeds
40
17
9
14
39
45
-6
43

Stoke
41
11
18
12
48
58
-10
40

We were heading to Highbury to take on Arsenal in our final game needing a point to guarantee the

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Infographic: Bent vs Carroll vs Suarez vs Torres vs Dzeko

I was one of a number of people to Re-Tweet this little gem before the kick off at Upton Park last weekend:

I noticed one or two people copy & pasting the contents, including both hashtags, to pass it off as their own (which is pretty lame), but I believe @Jacko442 is the originator.

By the final whistle, Bent had added to his tally and had another one chalked off for a foul only the referee saw. (You can add that to

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James Collins Wallpaper

James Collins joins the Aston Villa Central wallpaper collection for the first time and is one of the first to now also be available in 1920×1200 on top of the usual resolutions.  This is also the first brand new wallpaper to be added to the new mini-site.

Aston Villa 6 Blackburn 4 – Carling Cup Wallpaper

I’m still buzzing from last night!! I haven’t had chance to write anything else about the game, but I did get my crayons out to make a wallpaper for your desktop enjoyment.  The usual resolutions (1280×800, 1280×1024 & 1024×768) are available here.

This may be the last wallpaper I upload for a little while as I have a new Aston Villa Wallpaper mini-site in development and it’s a bit of extra work to publish to two places.

New Aston Villa Wallpaper

Yeah, you’re right, it’s a filler post really.  I’m beavering away on some site developments and don’t have much else to write about at the moment so I dug this wallpaper out of the archives.

Moustapha Salifou – King Of Awesome

As the story of the attack on the Togo national team coach broke today I couldn’t help put myself in the situation of the athletes on board.  OK, there may be questions asked about driving through a volatile region, but as professional athletes travelling during a tournament, surely none of them really expected to have their coach sprayed with machine gun fire.  In fact, for that matter, apart from soldiers and mercenaries, who really does expect to have “machine gun

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Carol Singing Aston Villa Style

I only decided to have a crack at this wallpaper this morning, so, given that I’ve not tried an illustration before, I’m reasonably happy with it.  If I had more time I would have made a few more snowmen and definitely given them some Villa scarves!! Maybe next year.

I’d like to thank everyone who has stopped by the blog this year and wish you all a very Merry Christmas.  I’d wish you a Happy New Year, but I’m expecting you

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Brad Guzan Is Not Pursuing An Acting Career

It’s time to put this silly rumour to bed. Brad Guzan is not growing his “neckbeard” for an upcoming staring role in a Hollywood movie and this is not a real movie poster.

Please, enough of this nonsense!! Thank you.

The Evolution Of Football Art With A Helping Of Fail – Part II

In Part I we went behind the scenes of a failed Aston Villa wallpaper. Here in Part II we’ll take a quick look at the evolution of the wallpapers here at Aston Villa Central by touring the ones that didn’t make the cut.

Disco In The South Stand

This was the first Aston Villa image I ever created. The picture shows Stan Petrov moments after firing his audacious effort on goal in the 6-0 destruction of Derby at Pride Park.

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