ASTON VILLA'S directors tonight face what could be the most crucial meeting in the club's crisis-fraught history of recent years. Their home defeat against Preston on Saturday dropped them firmly into the Second Division's last position and aroused the most serious crowd demonstration of disapproval that can ever have been seen at Villa Park. What will be the Board's solution when they hold their weekly meeting? Three times in the last decade they have parted company with their manager at. moments of crisis. Eric Houghton left almost exactly ten years ago. Joe Mercer's departure was in July1964, and his successor, Dick Taylor, lasted less than three years. Manager Tommy Cummings. who joined them from Mansfield at the start of last season, has bought players at a reputed cost of £200,000 and yet they have made no impact on the Second Division. Chairman Norman Smith, who left Villa Park at half-time on Saturday to attend the Arsenal dinner in London and missed the crowd demonstrations, said recently that he would announce an important development soon. He was not available for comment last night. Does this mean a managerial change or changes in the Board? If it is the former, where does it leave Villa? In the present state of the club, can they expect any manager to produce a recovery? Saving them from relegation to the Third Division will be a gargantuan job, let alone building them up to challenging for a return to the First. The time has come to pose the clear question: How long can Villa continue as a club of any sort of distinction with its present Board considered as an entity? *Birmingham Daily Post* Monday, 11 November 1968 IT is really incredible that the board of Aston Villa looking round for the reasons for the desperately poor showing of a club that is now in danger of falling through the bottom of the Second Division should fix its gaze on the club's manager and assistant manager, apparently oblivious to the need to look in another direction. Football club managers are well aware that theirs is a risky job, but it is hard not to condole with Mr. T. S. Cummings and with the club's assistant manager, Mr. M. C. Musgrove, on their dismissal. It is reasonable to ask why the club has not fulfilled expectations under the managership of a capable man of whose appointment hopes were obviously entertained. Is it a question of the judgment of the manager and the assistant manager or of the circumstances in which they have been working? The amount spent by Aston Villa in the past year in buying new players is high by the club's standards, but not in comparison with the expenditure of other major clubs. The board of Aston Villa can be accepted as having the best interests of this famous club at heart, otherwise its members would not have continued in an increasingly thankless office. What the board has not yet done is to think right through to what course of action would most effectively forward its aspirations. What sort of effect on morale will this removal of manager and assistant manager have at this particular stage? The board ought to direct its attention nearer home if it is going to make a thorough job of reform. Introspection is called for. Two new members of the board were recently appointed. What the situation clearly calls for is for some of the older members to show their loyalty to, and regard for the future of, the club that means so much to them by standing down and giving more new men a chance. Aston Villa needs new, youthful and thrustful direction at the very top, and even then it will have a hard fight to regain its former proud status. Time is against it. *Birmingham Daily Post* Tuesday, 12 November 1968