Martin O'Neill unrepentant over Aston Villa team selection

Martin O’Neill faces a crunch game tonight to appease his restless stars and placate Aston Villa fans still angry at the club’s UEFA Cup exit last term.

Boss O’Neill has endured an uneasy relationship with Villa fans since fielding a severely weakened team in the second leg of the last 32 away at CSKA Moscow last season.

And O’Neill has also had to defend his most recent team selection to some of his own players after handing new signing Fabian Delph a debut against Wigan.

O’Neill’s decision to give teenager Delph, recently signed from League One Leeds for £6million, a shock start in Villa’s opening day defeat left Nigel Reo-Coker and Steve Sidwell dismayed.

The pair had both impressed in pre-season as Villa won the Peace Cup in Spain.

And the two midfielders went to see O’Neill individually on Monday to voice their frustrations at being overlooked.

Reo-Coker and Sidwell are now expected to start against Rapid Vienna this evening in the Europa League.

But O’Neill still insists he has no regrets over the Moscow fiasco last February, which caused uproar among fans as Villa lost 3-1 on aggregate.

“I’m too long in the game now and I stand by the decisions I’ve made at the end of it all,” said O’Neill, whose side suffered a dire loss of form on their return from Russia.

“For me, so much has been said about it that it’s mind-blowing, it really is mind-blowing that people are looking to that to explain what happened at the end of last season.”

O’Neill defended his Moscow team at the time by claiming a top four spot was the club’s priority in their quest for Champions League football but Villa ended up sixth.

They let a 2-0 lead slip at home to Stoke with just minutes remaining in their following League match to draw on their return from Europe.

And O’Neill even hosted a slap-up dinner for the club’s disgruntled fans who shelled out around £1,000 each to visit the Russian capital.

But O’Neill remains defiant about the whole episode as Villa return to European action tonight.

He added: “It’s got out of proportion, people started saying that your whole season faded because of it, when in actual fact it was how we were trying to keep the season alive by utilising the players in the best way.

“People were saying some of the younger players would need a rest and suddenly when you don’t go with the strongest side and you give them a rest then you’re wrong because of that.

“If we had come back from that Moscow game having put a full side out and let a two-goal lead slip as we did against Stoke City the following game then people would have said that we should have played the young players in Moscow.”

Villa: Guzan, Beye, Cuellar, Davies, Shorey, Gardner, Sidwell, Reo-Coker, Milner, Delfouneso, Carew