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Not quite true. The ITV show the big match and its regional variation showed games on a Sunday afternoon. Hugh Johns was the midlands commentator. Those highlights were about 30 minutes so you saw a lot, then you got another couple of games from the other regions. Because of where we lived we got Anglia ITV and midlands ITV. One was an hour later than the other , so Sunday afternoons were often double football with highlights on a midlands game and an east game. If you were really lucky you would get Ipswich v Wolves on the Anglia channel one week, Wolves v whoever on the midlands channel a week later! League cup final was on telly, fa cup final was on telly all uefa and European cup finals were on telly , plus there were commentaries on the radio.If you haven't seen moaning then you haven't read through the whole thread. And I said 70's not 74. I don't doubt that Derek Parkin was the best left back to have played for us, but being born in 1972 I only saw him towards the end of his career with us and even then I was only 7/8 so I can't really vote for him and I'd say I'm in the oldest half of the forum.
As for the 70's in general I think it's all sepia tinged. The only live matches were FA Cup Finals and England games, so you only got to see players when they played your side or if they were one of the three - which it was by the late 70's games on Match of the Day. Therefore Bowles, Currie, Worthington etc get judged by highlights packages which we know from the modern day YouTube videos can make anyone look good. As for Europe, I'm not decrying the success we had from the mid 70's to 80's, but in the old European Cup format you were unlucky to get anything other than a virtual walkover prior to the 1/4 Final. As an example this is Villa's route to the final versus Bayern Munich, just the 4 matches:
Valur (Iceland)
Dynamo Berlin (East Germany)
Dynamo Kiev (USSR)
Anderlecht (Belgium)
It might have been easier to get there but it was harder to qualify. They were all champions of their respective countries then not 4th placers like now in Europe. Arguably there were times when the cup winners cup had stronger teams than the European cup.