"They made life very difficult for us but if you can't win those games you have to make sure you don't lose them.

”The way we gave the goals was alarming to say the least.

“Some defeats are acceptable [!] but not the manner in which we lost on Saturday.

“It was even harder for the supporters to take because we had played so well in beating West Ham in the previous match [Villa’s second win in seventeen].

“Birmingham deserve credit for being organised at the back, but the sad truth is that they attacked better than we did.

“We are certainly not sitting back and doing nothing about our position.

“We should never have got ourselves into this kind of trouble. But we are most definitely in trouble and the situation mush be rectified.

“The team we have been rebuilding [discarding the European Cup winning team of four years previously] still need a chance to knit together [Graham Turner has now been in post for 20 months]

Graham Turner.

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“He [Des Bremner’] has to accept that he has gone this level."

Graham Turner. 1984.

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“I’ve got no hard feelings about leaving Villa now, although at the time I was a bit disappointed.”

Des Bremner.