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Top 10 Aston Villa Players of all time

Aston Villa has a rich history of achievements in English football and here we  learn about the top 10 Aston Villa players of all time.  

10. Gordon Cowans

Gordon Cowans (Credit: avfc.co.uk)
Gordon Cowans (Credit: avfc.co.uk)

Gordon Cowans is one of Villa’s most decorated players in recent history, renowned for his brilliant passing. Cowans have won the European Cup, the First Division title, the League Cup, and the European Super Cup. In three stays with Villa, he scored 59 goals and made 527 appearances after joining as a 12-year-old schoolboy.

9. Billy Walker

Billy Walker (Credit: SportMob)
Billy Walker (Credit: SportMob)

Billy Walker is still Aston Villa’s all-time leading goalscorer, despite retiring in 1934. While this may speak to the club’s strikers in the past (*cough* Darius Vassell *cough*), it also testifies to what a fantastic player Walker was.

Walker, who played at Villa Park for 20 years and scored 244 goals in 531 games, will go down as one of the club’s all-time greats.

8. Dennis Mortimer

Dennis Mortimer (Credit: Aston Villa)
Dennis Mortimer (Credit: Aston Villa)

Dennis Mortimer will be remembered as the captain of Aston Villa during their most successful period. Mortimer was the guy who raised the European Cup in Rotterdam on May 26, 1982, after a historic victory over Bayern Munich. After leading the claret and blues to the First Division title the year before, the Liverpudlian midfielder was instrumental in Villa’s continental triumph. For Villa, Mortimer appeared in almost 400 games.

7. James Milner

James Milner (Credit: birminghammail.co.uk)
James Milner (Credit: birminghammail.co.uk)

The former Aston Villa midfielder has made one of the most Premier League appearances, scoring 55 goals and assisting 83 others.

He made 129 games for Villa before moving on to become Liverpool’s vice-captain. James Milner had his greatest season between 2009 and 2010, winning the PFA Young Player of the Year title.

6. Peter Withe

Peter Withe (Credit: express.co.uk)
Peter Withe (Credit: express.co.uk)

The idyllic years of the early 1980s would not have been possible without Peter Withe‘s ambition.

Withe scored 92 goals in 233 appearances for Villa between arriving for a record £500,000 deal from Newcastle in 1980 and departing for Sheffield United in 1985.

Twenty of those goals helped Villa win the First Division in 1981, and he is still the last player to score so many league goals in a season three decades later. The next year, he scored Villa’s most famous goal, a shinned effort that won the European Cup in 1982.

5. Tony Morley

Tony Morley (Credit: goal.com)
Tony Morley (Credit: goal.com)

Tony Morley was not a great goalscorer, but he was a wonderful goalscorer who got famous for them when playing for Aston Villa in the early 1980s.

Under Ron Saunders’ guidance, the nimble winger assisted on Villa’s European Cup-winning goal in 1982 and helped them win the league title in 1981.

4. Peter McParland

Peter McParland (Credit: birminghammail.trem.media)

Between 1952 and 1962, Peter McParland was the attacking midfielder for Aston Villa, making 293 games and scoring a total of 98 goals, more than any other side he played for throughout his career.

He is most remembered for scoring two goals in the 1957 FA Cup final against Aston Villa and Manchester United.

3. Dwight Yorke

Dwight Yorke (Source: PA Archive/Press Association Images)

Dwight Yorke is undoubtedly the best striker Aston Villa has had in the Premier League era, despite leaving in contentious circumstances for Manchester United.

Yorke was signed by Villa Park after being discovered by Graham Taylor on a pre-season tour of the West Indies in 1989. He began his career as a right winger, but it was in the 1995/96 season that he was shifted to centre forward, where he rapidly established himself as one of the greatest in England, if not the globe.

2. Allan Evans

Allan Evans (Credit: Aston Villa)
Allan Evans (Credit: Aston Villa)

During his career with Aston Villa, from 1977 and 1989, Allan Evans was one of their top defenders. When Aston Villa won the European Cup in 1982, he was a member of the winning squad and later became the club’s captain, guiding them back to the First Division. Evans scored 63 goals in 473 games for Aston Villa during his tenure there.

1. Paul McGrath

Paul McGrath (Credit: www.birminghammail.co.uk)
Paul McGrath (Credit: www.birminghammail.co.uk)

Only six defenders have ever won the PFA Players’ Player of the Year Award, and Paul McGrath is one of them.

He was a member of Ron Atkinson’s Villa team that challenged Manchester United for the Premier League title in the early 1990s, and some Villa fans simply refer to him as ‘God.’

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