Taylor stresses importance of West Midlands supremacy

Premiership: Villa manager keen to recover local bragging rights against West Bromwich Albion today

The scene0 is The Hawthorns in the era when the perms and the post-match tipple in the West Bromwich Albion manager's office were both bubbly. Ron Atkinson is talking to a huddle of hacks when his Aston Villa counterpart, Ron Saunders, passes. "Giving them the usual old rubbish, Ron?" snipes Saunders. "Yes, Ron," Atkinson says. "I was just saying what a good manager you are."

There are those who will tell you that, in the age of comfort-zone salaries and ubiquitous foreign players, derbies like today's 125th League meeting of Albion and Villa are not what they were. When it comes to comparing the antipathy between the two Rons with the mutual admiration of their present-day successors, Gary Megson and Graham Taylor, they may be right.

Taylor, however, is acutely aware of the significance of such occasions – not least because Villa lost the last 3-0 at Birmingham – and has come up with a graphic way of making sure no one else is in any doubt. "It's a 10-minute coach ride from Villa Park to Albion and we'll have a police escort to protect us from their fans," he said. "I've told the foreign lads that if we lose, we'll need an escort going back as well – from our own supporters."

Not that Taylor, whose team is likely to feature a Finn, a Norwegian, a Colombian and two Swedes, believes his overseas contingent needs reminding. After all, in last week's Manchester derby, a City team bereft of Englishmen humbled a United team containing a clutch of Mancunians.

"I think the accusation that foreign players don't understand derby matches is unfair, because some of the ones in their countries leave ours standing," said the former England manager, now nine months into his second spell at Villa. "And it's too simplistic for people to say that players don't care. It's often just that they've had a bad game."

Villa's surrender at St Andrew's in September was, according to Taylor, an example of the former. "The preparations were right, but we just didn't play well and the manner of Birmingham's second (Peter Enckelman's own goal) took the breath out of us. But if anyone wasn't aware of the importance of the game, and how close the clubs are to each other, they certainly are now."

Albion's sequence of seven games without a win has left them in the relegation zone, four points behind a Villa side who are unbeaten in three. Taylor is too canny to suggest that it is just another match – that might send out the wrong psychological signals – but remains keen to keep the bigger picture in focus.

"This would have been a big, big game for us whoever our opponents were," he said after admitting Villa's draws at Manchester United and Blackburn, followed by a 3-1 victory over Fulham, had lightened the mood in the claret and blue camp. "We're six points off the top six and four above the bottom three. Win at Albion and we can start to look at the top part of the table. Lose and we're back where we were after the home defeat by Southampton, looking over our shoulders."

Should Albion's slide continue they will be in danger of emulating Taylor's Watford team of 1999-2000, who came up unexpectedly and went straight back down. "Gary is finding what I found: there's a massive difference between the First Division and the Premiership," Taylor said. "But even though Watford were relegated, we had results like winning at Liverpool and the players never gave in. You can be sure Gary will have Albion organised and their attitude will be spot-on."

Megson, in fact, claims to have data which proves Albion have "out-worked every team we've played this season", adding candidly that "it's the other things we need to work on". The rivalry with Villa came as a surprise to him, his assumption having been that Albion's collision with Wolves was the bigger derby until older fans put him right.

It is actually one of football's oldest parochial tussles, dating back 113 years to before the first Manchester or Merseyside derby. One reason for its traditional intensity is that the clubs are linked by history as well as geography. They met, for example, in three FA Cup finals more than a century ago, and saw themselves as sporting aristocracy, vying for supremacy within what is now the West Midlands.

William McGregor, founder of the Football League and a major figure in Villa's formative years, wrote in 1905 of "the halo of romance that surrounds West Bromwich Albion" and hailed them as "a powerful attraction wherever football is played". Nearly 50 years later, Villa beat Albion to deny them the championship (won by Wolves). Five years on, Albion sent Villa down in the last game. On four occasions Villa's visit has set a Hawthorns attendance record.

While today's full house of 27,000 represents less than half the number which once gathered to see them lock horns at a ground which lies half in the Black Country and half in Birmingham, the atmosphere will be as passionate as ever. After they last met, in a 1990 FA Cup tie which Villa won 2-0 at Albion, Graham Taylor spoke of the need to be "masters in our own backyard". The title does not figure in either club's honours list, but both sets of supporters crave it.