"Do you want to bet against us?" - Ron Saunders
“Villa have been a great club, are still a great club, and always will be a great club.” - Frederick Rinder, 1936.
The door to the lavishly appointed Guest Room at Villa Park was open and out in the corridor the little boys, dodging the commissionaire, were calling for Brian Little and John Gidman. Quite rightly, they took no notice of myself and the elderly bald-headed man, bespectacled, stooping a little, who was quietly finishing his tea. He looked at them for a moment, a whimsical look, and moved to the long windows overlooking the now deserted playing pitch.“Every time you come back here it must bring back memories Pongo” I said. He stared out for a long while. I thought he’d forgotten I was there. “Aye,” he said suddenly, “aye, they’re a great club…the greatest.” I stood and looked with him, this old man whose goals had set the Villa crowds roaring so long ago. It was not quite dusk on that March afternoon and I saw them too…they were out again, the old ghosts…Jack Hughes, scorer just about one hundred years earlier of Aston Villa’s first goal (perhaps to the very day)…George Ramsay…the Hunter brothers…Willie McGregor…Denny Hodgetts…legion upon legion of them on parade now, filling the field with claret and blue…the century with pride.Peter Morris: “Aston Villa – the First 100 Years”