Young Wins Managers Praise

Martin O’Neill stated after the Odense match, ‘it was a great, great goal from a great, great player.’.

Ashley Young will certainly be partying tonight after securing Villa’s place in the UEFA Cup, even if the match has cost us Bouma for the start of the season.

Villa dominated most of the game, and completed a 3-2 aggregate victory over Odense. We now have to wait until August 1st I believe before we find out who our first ‘proper’ European opponents will be.

Speaking on the official site, a delighted O’Neill said:

‘I’m very pleased. We won the game and I think we deserved to win it but it was tough.

‘They had a couple of chances in the first-half and it would have been very awkward for us had they scored. But I felt that we dug in and Ashley came up with a fantastic goal to win the game.

‘Once we got our noses in front we saw it through better than we did last week. We’ll come on a lot as a consequence of this game and I’m just really pleased to have got through.’

Speaking specifically about Ashley Young’s goal, the manager continued:

‘It was a great, great goal from a great, great player. He’s in full control of the ball no matter what pace he’s going at. Even in full flight you think he’s capable of anything and he came up with a fantastic goal.

‘He deserved the goal because he’s getting back to the form of last year – perhaps more quickly than we’d imagined. We want him to keep performing.

‘We had a number of chances in the second-half but the one goal was enough and we deserved to go through. That will bring us on immensely.’

Onwards and upwards now, and more signings please!