Villa manager Martin O’Neill claimed his side should have been “out of sight” before they crashed out of Europe to Rapid Vienna.

The claret and blues beat Rapid 2-1 in the second leg of their Europa League qualifier last night, but lost on the away goals rule after the tie ended 2-2 on aggregate.

James Milner and John Carew put Villa on course for the group stages before Nikica Jelavic’s late strike sent Vienna through.

Ashley Young missed a penalty in the first-half while Milner and Emile Heskey had chances after the break to seal the game.

O’Neill believes they should have progressed.

He said: “We should have won. We did actually win the game but we should have got through. We should have had the game out of sight before they scored.

“They exerted some pressure at 2-0, which you would expect, but I thought we had a number of chances to go from 2-0 to 3-0 and that would have sealed the tie.

“Overall I was very pleased with the application of the side. I am desperately disappointed that we are not through.

“It would have been great experience again particularly for the younger players. Last season, despite the way it ended for us in the UEFA Cup, I thought we had some splendid nights at Villa Park.

“I will miss those but we have to get on with it now and we will come again.”

The Villa Park chief admitted his side always needed the elusive third goal to make the game safe.

He said: “We always felt we needed three goals in the game because there is the possibility of conceding. We had two good chances to seal the game.

“I thought the team played very well.”

Vienna coach Peter Pacult, who saw his team become the first from Austria to knock an English side out of Europe, was delighted with the result.

He said: “This is the nicest defeat we have ever had. A lot of uncomplimentary things have been written about me back home in the past few months.

“I hope I have proved a point with this result.”