Aston Villa Football Club News

• Nickname:The Villains
• Founded:1874
• Manager:Alex McLeish

• Ground:Villa Park
• Capacity:42,584

O'Neill rues lost opportunity

25 Sep 2008 - 08:14:40

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Aston Villa boss Martin O'Neill accused his side of squandering an opportunity after they were dumped out of the Carling Cup at the hands of QPR.

The Championship side won their third round encounter 1-0 at Villa Park on Wednesday evening despite O'Neill naming a strong side.

Gareth Barry, Ashley Young, John Carew and Stiliyan Petrov all started for the Premier League side and afterwards O'Neill was in critical mood.

"We put enough into the game to win it. It's a wasted opportunity," he claimed.

"When the match is in the balance and you don't take your chances, there's always a possibility you might concede and we did.

"We were beaten in the game but if we had been played off the park it would have been a different issue.

"It's naturally disappointing to go out of the competition and not to be in the hat for the next round is really frustrating."

Meanwhile, O'Neill played down the significance of Barry captaining the side in the absence of Martin Laursen.

The England midfielder lost the armband during the summer when he and O'Neill fell out over his proposed move to Liverpool.

"It's nothing. In the scheme of things it's really unimportant," added the Villa boss.

"I'm more disappointed about losing the game so the captaincy is not the thing.

"I was more than pleased to give it to Gareth and he was more than pleased to get it.

"He didn't hold a speech or anything like that over it but he was, I'm sure, pretty pleased.

"He doesn't give much away but I think he was pleased - as anyone who gets the captaincy at this football club should be."