Martin O’Neill has urged his side to attack Atlante tonight – and snatch a place in the Peace Cup semi-finals.

The Mexicans’ victory over Malaga on Monday night threw Villa a lifeline following their 1-0 defeat to the Spaniards on Saturday evening.

Martin O’Neill’s men now know victory by a two-goal margin over this evening’s opponents will guarantee them a spot in the last four, where Porto or Besiktas could lie in wait.

The Villa chief is looking for a more attack-minded display after his team failed to find the target against Malaga.

He said: “We need to score two goals, so there at least there is an incentive there for us, which is good. I am now looking for us to express ourselves a bit more.

“I would have taken the (Atlante-Malaga) result the other night. I went to the game and obviously I was cheering on the Mexicans!

“They will not be any pushovers because they deserved to win. Technically they were very good.

“It won’t be easy but it is an incentive.”

That quest for goals will be boosted by the availability of Emile Heskey, who has been passed fit to play after recovering from mild concussion.

O’Neill said: “With Emile Heskey going off early we left John Carew on his own and, with respect to John, he would prefer to play centre-forward with a partner.”

“But Emile is going to be fine. He did the warm ups on Monday but did not play in the games. On Tuesday he joined in. He will be alright, he is pretty keen to play and there are no other injuries.”

Saturday’s game was a first pre-season run-out for Heskey, Carew, Ashley Young and Stiliyan Petrov and the manager hopes to see the quartet step up another gear after building up their fitness in Spain this week.

O’Neill said: “We had five players (Moustapha Salifou was the other) coming back a week last Monday.

“With the best will in the world, as much as there is a bit of prize money and it would be great to get to the semi-final, I had to take those players off, because that is all the training they had done.

“I was hoping the senior players who played against Peterbrough and Colchester would have seen us through.

“It was a pity Malaga scored at the end but what we want to do is get some fitness into the players.”

Probable Villa team (4-4-2): Friedel, Lichaj, Cuellar, Davies, Shorey; Reo-Coker, Petrov, Sidwell, Young, Carew, Heskey.