Martin O'Neill's Claret & Blue Army

I've been an Aston Villa fan for around 35 years now and, as is the case with most football fans, it's been a time of fantastic highs (winning the European Cup in 1982) and unbelievable lows (relagation to the old 2nd Division in 1987) mainly punctuated by seasons of staggering mediocrity with the odd League Cup win, FA Cup Final or European campaign thrown just to keep us on the right side of optimistic.

Aston Villa are one of the oldest football clubs in the world and have one of the proudest histories of any club and, just recently, the takeover talk at Villa Park surrounding the various groups that are said to be interested in buying the club has given all villa fans hope that the glory days could be on the way back.

Yesterday we had the best news possible, Martin O'Neill (probably the best British manager in the game right now) has taken over as the new manager. Suddenly the new season is a much more exciting propspect.

Now if only we could get rid of Doug Ellis I would be a truly happy man.