A LOT of Aston Villa fans will give Doug Ellis a rousing reception next time he turns up at Villa Park, partly to thank him for his service, but mainly to thank him for turning over the club to someone else. It is time to move forward now and he has done the right thing.
Was he a hero or a villain? He always tried to do his best for the club, but more than any other chairman he has twisted and turned to try to find success and changed his ideas along the way. Sometimes he was stingy with the budget and then he would go mad and give in to a manager such as John Gregory, let him have what he wanted and think: “Well, if that’s the way you do it and you want to spend, here’s a load of money — go and spend that.” Then he would tighten the purse strings again.
When I signed for the club in 1990, Doug told me that he and Graham Taylor, the manager at the time, were very close to getting Gary Lineker as well. They had agreed to pay him £10,000 a week, but Graham was uncertain about how the dressing-room would react to one player being paid such a high wage. Doug, though, was for it — there were a lot of contradictions along the way.
He always wanted the club to achieve, but he never seemed to have a clear plan. He got swayed. I remember he said that he did not want any players over 30, he wanted to build for the future — and then suddenly they would buy a load of experienced players.
It was all twists and turns for Doug, with a minimum of success. He was not in charge when Villa won the European Cup in 1982 and I think that challenge was always there in the background.
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They called him Deadly Doug, but he was always quite open and players could go to see him. I went to his house when I was involved in contract negotiations and had a cup of tea and biscuits and his wife served us muffins.
He was always seen around in his Roller — he was always approachable. In fact, I think he got far too close to his managers. He acted like a fan.
He liked to be involved and nine times out of ten it backfired. He used to enjoy coming into the dressing-room before games to have his say, but the players did not like it. It was the only time that it happened in my career in England, although Bernard Tapie did it all the time at Marseilles.
I think he thought that the players would want to hear him and be interested in what he had to say, but most of the time they would not be. It was never appreciated.
If we’d gone through a bad run, he’d talk about what might happen if it continued — as if we weren’t aware. He wouldn’t get angry, but he would try to lay it on the line in a gentle way: “Some of you boys might find your contracts running out and it might be difficult to renew them.” It wasn’t a problem for Taylor, but Ron Atkinson stopped it.
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I would not say that Doug held the club back because his intentions were always the best for Villa, but sometimes the decisions were wrong. When Taylor left in the summer of 1990 and Josef Venglos came in, I thought it was a cheap option. He has done that a few times and I think it backfired on him. He has tried everything — in-your-face managers like Ron and the quiet type, too.
Getting Martin O’Neill is a great move and I am sure Doug would have liked to have had someone like Martin ten or 15 years ago, but timing is everything in football, isn’t it?