Swain on Villa 1 Birmingham 0

You would not have thought it possible for Alex McLeish to feel any worse at Villa Park than he did two years ago. Wrong.

His Blues team gave him what he demanded - a performance to restore pride and credibility after that crushing, humiliating and relegation-tipping 5-1 calamity on his watch in 2008.

But yesterday's cruel twist at the end of a rousing derby, which saw Villa nick a contest they barely deserved to win with a hugely-contentious penalty, left McLeish coping with an even greater gloom than that which swamped him on his previous visit.

"This," he said with feeling, "is strangely even harder to take."

No wonder. Blues were splendid and Villa were - well, Villa. At home at any rate - occasionally and a little plodding, struggling against a well-organised game plan and, despite the manager's dismissal of John Terry's now infamous barb at their fatigue levels, flagging again over the final half hour.

But their tenacity and sheer stubbornness cannot and should not be under-estimated. Five league games after being humiliated themselves at Stamford Bridge, they are back snapping at the heels of the coveted fourth place and with a monumental fixture now heading their way at Manchester City this weekend.

Whatever carping continues about the quality of Villa's football and their manager's strait-jacket thinking, O'Neill's ability to drag such effort from his core group of players is extraordinary.

But to make it 13 points out of 15 since the 7-1 hiding by Chelsea, they needed a moment which I'll wager will be the subject of raging argument in the Second City's workplaces and pubs not just this week but for months to come.

With eight minutes remaining and Blues for once caught short of the midfield cover which had so effectively thrown a suffocating blanket over Villa, Ashley Young had space and time to flip a trademark pass over the top which sent Gabriel Agbonlahor powering into the area.

Roger Johnson was tracking him and, as Agbonlahor cut across him got a feather touch on the ball, before bringing down the Villa striker.

Referee Martin Atkinson's penalty call was immediate but its effects will endure for a long time to come. McLeish argued a perfectly legitimate tackle had been punished, O'Neill's view was that Johnson's touch on the ball had not effected the threat of the moment and Agbonlahor's progress had been impeded.

He was prepared to reconsider that view on closer scrutiny of the replays not then available but, while it was easy to see how Atkinson had come to his decision, it was difficult not to side with McLeish's verdict.

It was equally possible not to imagine the football gods playing their own game of "evening-up" after the botched decisions which counted so heavily against Villa in the Wembley occasions this season against Manchester United and Chelsea.

O'Neill admitted later he would have traded this dodgy penalty award for a different outcome from either of those two incidents - the Nemanja Vidic non-sending off and the missed Agbonlahor penalty against Chelsea - as they might have cost his club silverware.

But the value of the vital winner then struck with certainty by James Milner beyond goalkeeper Joe Hart to bring about a din within Villa Park not heard in an age cannot be so lightly dismissed.

Villa may still be second favourites to reach the Champions League, but stranger things have happened and they deserve enormous credit for dragging themselves back into contention.

Perhaps it was Milner's coolness at the penalty spot, against a goalkeeper who must have provided watching England coach Fabio Capello with major encouragement for his World Cup considerations that persuaded the match sponsors to then announce him as Man of the Match.

Nonsense. Villa's hero of the day had undoubtedly been goalkeeper Brad Friedel - and perhaps that passes its own comment on the flow of this derby - who repeatedly defied Blues with a range of saves that contained bravery, experience and agility. The American was outstanding and Villa needed him to be.

The noon kick-offs now so frequently associated with these derbies have in the past emasculated the atmosphere but not yesterday - Villa Park was throbbing long before the start and the intensity of noise and colour painted a healthy picture of this region's football on the rise.

That we have so much more to look forward to next season, when our own 'big four' will be competing at this level, added to the relish.

Villa will be expected to remain out in front of their trio of neighbours and would be confident of doing so if they could produce more concertedly the qualities which brought their best moments yesterday, all in the first-half.

The pass by an otherwise erratic Carlos Cuellar which picked out Stiliyan Petrov on the edge of the area on 26 minutes was one of the few occasions Blues were wrong-footed, but Hart's save low to his right at full stretch was top drawer.

The slide rule pass from Petrov which followed moments later and played in Stewart Downing was again of a quality not seen enough from the claret and blues, but Hart beat away the midfielder's powerful drive before later distinguishing himself still further with a wonderful reflex stop to deny James Collins from Villa's more usual approaches.

In between times, this derby almost had its Enckelman moment when Richard Dunne allowed a soft pass from his goalkeeper to roll over his foot and give the lurking Sebastian Larsson the chance to embarrass the defender.

Fortunately, Friedel was alert and just reached the Blues midfielder's shot but the goalkeeper needed to be even better to reach the returning Craig Gardner's effort low to his right, as the home side began to creak a little around the front of their area.

It was the second-half, which Blues opened by nearly scoring three times in as many minutes, which brought Villa their greatest difficulties.

Friedel was out in an instant to block Cameron Jerome's effort, taking the ball smack in his face for his labours, before James McFadden was agonisingly wide from the subsequent scraps and Downing cleared a Liam Ridgewell header off the line.

His best save was reserved for defying the excellent Lee Bowyer as he rushed on to a half-clearance, but somehow saw the goalkeeper deal with his point blank effort in the 67th minute.

Blues, by then, looked in comfortable control as yet again Villa struggled to make something of a team flooding midfield.

Even after Milner's decisive penalty, they required a Dunne header to clear from his goal-line a goal bound shot from substitute Keith Fahey.

But survive they did to claim a victory jubilantly celebrated while Blues fury was reflected in the four bookings - for Johnson, Bowyer, Barry Ferguson and Stephen Carr - that sprang from their view of the penalty award.

The arguments about that, however, are far from over.