Villa’s injury headache has worsened after Curtis Davies and Emile Heskey emerged as doubts for Wednesday’s crunch clash with CSKA Moscow.

Heskey sat out the 3-1 FA Cup defeat to Everton after aggravating an Achilles problem on international duty, prompting fresh criticism of England from O’Neill, while Davies is a concern after popping his shoulder at Goodison Park.

Villa are already already certain to be without injured quartet Martin Laursen, Nigel Reo-Coker, Carlos Cuellar, Freddie Bouma and the suspended Steve Sidwell for the first leg of the UEFA Cup last-32 tie, leaving manager Martin O’Neill’s squad at full stretch.

He said: “I don’t know if they will be ready for Wednesday. Curtis was in a lot of pain, his shoulder came out of place and luckily with a bit of manipulation it got back in again.

“We’ll have to have a look at that. I think it’s happened one time to him before, but that was obviously a big concern.

“He wanted to play on and the physios and the doctors assured me that once it’s back in there again, hopefully it will settle down.

“We’ll have to see how Emile is, he obviously aggravated it again by playing on the Wednesday.

“We’ll see how he responds, I’m hoping he’ll be back sooner rather than later, I just don’t know.”

Bouma is set to return to action tonight after his long lay-off with an ankle injury. He will feature for the reserves against Arsenal at Hinckley (7pm).