Aston Villa 1, Birmingham City 0: Mat Kendrick's Birmingham Mail verdict

Apr 26 2010 By Mat Kendrick

ASTON Villa, the Second City’s ultimate neighbours from hell, are on the stairway to heaven.

How the devil they have done it, only Martin Atkinson will know.

But it must be an absolute nightmare living next door to Villa. That’s a record six straight league wins for the claret and blues over their local rivals now.

To make it even better for Villa and worse for Blues, yesterday’s controversial result means that Martin O’Neill’s derby heroes have now booked their place in Europe.

And at this rate, Villa might not just be flicking through travel brochures looking for Europa League get-aways. They could be visiting some of the continent’s more exotic Champions League locations.

If Villa do maintain their momentum to continue this remarkable surge towards the top four then it will be all the sweeter travelling into Europe’s premier competition via this contentious conquest over Birmingham.

Keeping up with the O’Neills has always been hard. It was bad enough when the 16-year and one-year injunctions kept Blues away from the posh part of the road – but at least they knew their place back then. It must be even worse now that they can see Villa flaunting their superiority from so close.

Especially when Alex McLeish, the hardworking head of Birmingham’s house, has earned a promotion which puts them so near but yet so far to their nearest, but by no means dearest. It was ironic that Gabby Agbonlahor, the scourge of St Andrew’s, should again play such an important part in keeping the bragging rights in B6.

Agbonlahor was last week accused of being a nuisance neighbour by residents on his swanky Streetly estate for racing around in his sports cars. And it was a super-charged burst of speed which caused such an annoyance to that lot down the road during yesterday’s decisive moment.

Having scored in all of Villa’s last three victories over Blues, Agbonlahor threatened to strike again when he was released by Ashley Young seven minutes from time.

But Roger Johnson produced a perfectly-timed, impeccably executed tackle to touch the ball off Agbonlahor’s boot as he raced towards Joe Hart’s goal.

Despite O’Neill’s initial suggestions that it was a definite penalty, the Villa boss seemed to soften his position when later persuaded that the Blues defender’s momentum had felled Agbonlahor.

It was too late to change the opinion of Atkinson. On a day when Villa oldboys Craig Gardner and Liam Ridgewell and former Birmingham striker Emile Heskey all threatened to be the villains – or heroes – of the piece, the Yorkshire official stole the limelight.

Villa and Agbonlahor, specifically, have paid the penalty for ropey refereeing recently with hard luck stories in the Carling Cup final and FA Cup semi-final.

But although O’Neill insists yesterday’s dodgy decision did not make up for their Wembley woes, it is true that they were due the rub of the green.