Everton v Aston Villa: We'll need luck to lick the Toffees says Martin O'Neill

Feb 13 2009 by Bill Howell, Birmingham Mail

BRIAN Clough’s sorrows in the FA Cup have taught Martin O’Neill one thing: that Villa will need a sprinkling of luck at Everton tomorrow.

Villa go searching for a rare quarter-final place at Goodison Park having reached only one in the last 12 years.

Nottingham Forest’s FA Cup credentials even in an era of near domestic invincibility, where they set a record unbeaten league run of 42 games, were no better.

A league title and runners-up spot, two European Cups, two League Cups – and yet in the six years O’Neill played under Clough the best Forest could muster in the FA Cup was a quarter-final defeat at West Brom in 1978.

“Of course you need luck. There was a couple of years of going close at Forest,” O’Neill recalls.

“We got beaten by West Bromwich Albion in the quarter-final. A couple of weeks before we took on Liverpool in the League Cup final, which we won on a replay, so at that stage the games were coming thick and fast.

“In truth, the FA Cup just became another game.

“There was a feeling that we could win the league and at that time we were going brilliantly in the league.