Fearless Villa ‘to thrive in Europe’

Martin O’Neill today insisted Villa are playing without fear and believes the club will be able to sustain Champions League football in the future.

Boss O’Neill has been bowled over by the growing belief in the camp that Villa can keep up their run to the end of the season.

Villa go into Wednesday’s visit of Middlesbrough with one defeat in 12 games and O’Neill believes his side can continue their impressive run.

“I’m hoping this football club in the future will be able to sustain things,” he said.

“All the top four sides have got the necessary equipment and the back-up to do it.

“We’re causing teams problems because we can get at them. We’re playing with no real fear, which is great considering the stakes are pretty high. That to me is the lovely thing about it.

“There’s a lot to make up a whole season.  And yet it’s the sides who can hang in during games where they haven’t played particularly well in a match and get something out of a game that eventually determines where they finish.

“Like anything else it’s not just a case of somebody telling the players to believe in themselves. You have to perform. The performances themselves will be enough for those players to believe they can do it.

“Winning consistently and not getting beaten – we’ve lost one league game in 12 – and we’ve shown we can attack.

“Ashley Young and Gabby Agbonlahor are thriving on it – and I thought Marlon Harewood was brilliant when he came on at Arsenal.”

O’Neill added: “We’re improving and we’re capable of causing teams problems. 

“And we caused Arsenal plenty of problems. I wouldn’t judge our season on how poor some might have perceived us to be for 60 minutes up at Anfield, a lot of teams can go there and be poor for 60 minutes.

“I wouldn’t even judge our season on how brilliant we were last Saturday. We’re finding a level of performance. We’ve conceded a couple of late goals at both Liverpool and Arsenal, but they can be countered by the couple of late goals we scored ourselves against Fulham at home and Birmingham away when Gabby scored a great goal towards the end. That was brilliant.”