1981–82 Aston Villa F.C. season

The 1981–82 English football season was Aston Villa's 3rd season in Europe and 83rd season in the Football League. In May 1982, just three months after being appointed manager, Tony Barton guided Villa to a 1–0 victory over Bayern Munich in the European Cup final in Rotterdam. As of December 2023, Villa remain one of only six English teams to have won the European Cup, along with Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Nottingham Forest. They were the underdogs in the final and were expected to lose.

As defending First Division champions for the first time in 71 years, they qualified for the European Cup for the first time in their history. Their first game in the competition was against Valur of Iceland, following by a second round clash with BFC Dynamo of East Germany, Dynamo Kiev of the Soviet Union in the quarter-finals and then Anderlecht of Belgium in the semi-finals before beating Bayern Munich of West Germany 1–0 in the final in Rotterdam, with Peter Withe scoring the winning goal.

Ron Saunders resigned on 9 February 1982. At the time, Villa were mid-table in the First Division and had reached the quarter-finals of the European Cup. There had been increasing tension between the manager and Chairman Ron Bendall with Saunders complaining about stadium manager Terry Rutter's expenditure and seeking more say over non-footballing matters. Rutter would later receive a suspended prison sentence having been prosecuted for conspiracy to defraud the Football Grounds Improvement Trust and obtaining money by deception from the Club. The judge stated that Bendall would have faced these charges too had he not died.

Saunders had been in charge since 1974, nearly eight years, winning a league title and two League Cups in the process. His successor was his assistant manager Tony Barton, who had been in charge for three months by the time Villa won the European Cup.