With Project Restart in the Premier League fast approaching, armchair fans will soon be in for a feast of football. When Aston Villa take on Sheffield United on Wednesday June 17, it will be the first of 92 matches over a period of 39 days that will eventually bring the 2019/20 top flight season to a conclusion.
Football without fans simply feels wrong, and witnessing matches on television with no supporters present in the stadiums will be a peculiar experience. With or without crowd noise piped in, it will be interesting to see the first Premier League match played behind closed doors at Villa Park.
But it will not be a unique occasion for that famous old ground. Aston Villa may be fighting for survival in the current campaign, but the club were champions of Europe when they last played a competitive match in an empty Villa Park. Violence and glory provided the ingredients for the story behind Wednesday September 15, 1982.
A 0-0 draw against Anderlecht in the second leg of the semi-final saw Villa reach their first European Cup final in April 1982. Yet crowd disturbances in Brussels resulted in 27 fans being arrested and a further 20 injured, and when one fan invaded the pitch as Kenneth Larsen moved towards goal, the match was stopped. After a seven minute delay, the action resumed. But Villa's 1-0 aggregate win would come at a cost.
Anderlecht appealed to UEFA, with rumours circulating that the second leg could be replayed or that Villa might even be expelled from the tournament. Fortunately, UEFA chose to hit Villa in the pocket, fining the club £14,500 and ordering them to play their next home European match behind closed doors.
Villa's famous 1-0 win over Bayern Munich in Rotterdam maintained England's grip on the European Cup, and with both Villa and Liverpool in the 1982/83 competition, hopes were high of a seventh consecutive triumph. Villa were drawn against Turkish champions Besiktas in the first round, with the first leg now an unusual contest at Villa Park.
Manager Tony Barton was hopeful that his team could take a useful lead to Istanbul for the second leg, despite the empty terraces. "I would be more concerned if we were playing, say Juventus when we would expect the crowd to lift us," Barton stated, as many journalists assessed the potential impact of playing the match at 2.30pm in a sparsely populated Villa Park.
With the crowd estimated between 200-250, including approximately 70 journalists, 15 stewards and a few policemen, the Guardian reported how the match was played in front of "eerily empty terraces". Some Villa fans did attempt to get around the sanctions, gathering on the slopes of Aston Park to catch a glimpse of one of the goals through a gap in the stands.
The lack of atmosphere did little to hold the home team back. After six minutes Peter Withe opened the scoring - greeted with slightly less noise than his previous goal in the competition - and three minutes later Tony Morley doubled the lead. When Morley scored again on the half hour, it appeared as if Villa were going to run riot.
The second half was not quite as comfortable. "We geed ourselves up in the first half, but it was hard to do it again after the break," skipper Dennis Mortimer admitted, as Villa allowed the visitors to get back into the match. A mistake by keeper Jimmy Rimmer saw Mehmet Eksi reduce the deficit - the first goal Villa had conceded in Europe in 590 minutes - and a late sitter missed by Necdet Ergun indicated that the second leg would not be a straightforward assignment.
Besiktas' goal was celebrated with gusto, one of the few noises heard in the stadium on the day. The Guardian's David Lacey wrote about the "raucous behaviour of the Turks in Villa's normally staid directors' box", but, that apart, the atmosphere was surreal.
For 15 minutes of the second half a helicopter hovered nearby, reportedly Central Television trying to cover part of the match - their visit did not coincide with the Besiktas goal - yet the main soundtrack of the afternoon was the players, and that of typewriters clattering away in the press box.
"The stadium echoed to the shouting of the players, which at times sounded like a flock of seagulls," Lacey noted, with Rimmer and Villa centre back Ken McNaught particularly vocal, although Lacey revealed that the latter's "strong Scottish accent made most of his utterings unintelligible."
The Times' Richard Eaton raised a point that many will debate in the final few weeks of the Premier League season: "If anybody doubted that atmosphere is 75 per cent of a sporting occasion he should have been here." It must have been a bit of an odd contrast for those players who had featured in the final win against Bayern. Spare a thought for full back Pat Heard, who would make his sole European appearance for Villa in this peculiar environment.
Rob Bishop's Euros and Villains book contains a section on this abnormal match. Former secretary Steve Stride questioned the official crowd figure of 167: "I'm sure the crowd figure was made up! UEFA had stipulated there should be no more than 200 people inside the ground." Development Association employee Pam Bridgewater noted: "It was a weird experience, very eerie."
The match at Villa Park was by no means unique in the 1980s. West Ham had previously played behind closed doors in a European Cup Winners' Cup first round tie against Castilla at Upton Park; Burton Albion and Leicester City had to replay an FA Cup third round match at Highfield Road after crowd violence marred the original fixture at the Baseball Ground.
Villa progressed to the next round after a 0-0 draw in Istanbul, but their run would eventually end at the hands of Juventus in the last eight. The first leg against the Italian club saw 45,531 come through the turnstiles at Villa Park; a slightly different end to the start of their European Cup defence at Villa Park.
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