The Full Morty: Dennis Mortimer

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Withe, acting in frustration and losing control, chopped down Wolfgang Kraus and was booked for the offence.

I regard Phil as one of the best possible examples of a true professional. His greatest asset as a player is his ability to read the game, he showed that gift even as a teenager. The closest he got to an England cap was when he sat on the bench for the Home Internationals with Scotland and Wales in 1981.Ron Saunders leaves the Aston Villa training ground, Bodymoor Heath, after resigning as manager. Photograph: Gerry Armes/Popperfoto/Getty Images

At the end of the final players swapped shirts with the pre-match favourites Bayern Munich but Mortimer wanted to keep his number 6 on because of the cup presentation. He later gave it away in the Munich dressing room and his nephew is scouring Germany trying to locate it. Captain Dennis Mortimer and Tony Barton of Aston Villa lift the European Cup, to the cheers of around 20,000 fans outside the Town Hall on 28th May 1982 (Image: Mirrorpix) Evans was taking few risks – or prisoners – and sent the stately Paul Breitner crashing to the turf.And at the end the 11 who finished the game, plus the doleful Rimmer, saluted the supporters, a gambolling, hugging, excited mass of a team surrounded by photographers who made way for the near-delirious party of their victory round.

It needed two hands to lift it – it wasn’t like the league championship trophy from the year before, which you could lift with one,” said Mortimer, who was Villa’s longest serving player when they faced the German champions in Feyenoord's stadium.Dennis Mortimer was Aston Villa’s most successful captain in the club’s greatest team which became English champions in 1981 and then won Europe’s greatest club competition a year later – the European Champions Cup. It's not surprising that, when people are asked to name the three scousers to have lifted the European Cup as captain, they forget Dennis Mortimer. Not just because he was wearing claret and blue rather than red, but because few footballers have spent as much of their career in the West Midlands as the man who arrived at Villa Park in 1975. Ukip are on the margins of electoral politics in Scotland, far removed from their peak in the last decade when David Coburn was the party’s representative in Brussels. We should be talking about winning trophies and playing in Europe. The supporters are desperate for a win tomorrow as that would mean they have done the double over Blues. That would be the only thing they could take out of this season - beating Blues and sending them down. That shouldn't be what it is about."

He will forever be remembered as the man who lifted the biggest prize of all in Rotterdam - the greatest night in the club's history. Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse. Reds of a certain vintage will remember how Thompson would drink champagne on the Anfield pitch after Liverpool had secured their 11th league championship, following a 3-0 victory over Aston Villa in 1979. It would be his fourth league winner’s medal since breaking into the team just seven years earlier. He would tell the Liverpool ECHO, on the night: All I could think about in the last few minutes was getting my hands on that trophy,” said Mortimer. After leaving Villa, Mortimer moved to Brighton & Hove Albion but was only there a year before returning to the Midlands with Birmingham City, [1] thereby breaking the second-city taboo by playing for City and Villa.I can picture it as vividly as if it were yesterday,” he said. “I’m sure any of the other players who were involved would tell you the same. Every generation, every crowd and every single Aston Villa fan has their own heroes. How could they not, after 133 often glorious years? This is the club who have provided more England internationals than any other. This is the club who founded the Football League. But they say little about the emotional intensity of 90 minutes that were decided by Peter Withe’s ricochet goal which was enough to defeat Bayern Munich on a glorious night in the Feyenoord Stadium, Rotterdam. If this has been an unbelievable few months for Barton, it has been even more incredible for chairman Ron Bendall and his son, Don. They gambled in giving the manager a contract and the gamble has been wondrously successful. For that, Birmingham owes them a lot.