Aston Villa boss insists Villa have made progress

May 18 2009 by Bill Howell, Birmingham Mail

MARTIN O’Neill has dismissed suggestions that sixth place and the same points as last season does not represent progress from last season.

Villa were sat on 59 points with one game to go at West Ham last May.

They now head into their final match against Newcastle on Sunday looking for three points to get their best Premier League total since Brian Little took Villa to fourth in 1995/96 with 63 points.

But O’Neill has had to cope without senior players for the majority of the season and believes it should be judged on its merits.

“I disagree entirely that it is not the progress we wanted,” he said.

“And maybe next season when Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur are strong and maybe a survival team here from the north east is strong again, I think you might think that sixth isn’t bad at all.

“I would say that we’ve qualified for Europe for the second consecutive year and we qualified a couple of weeks ago.

“We didn’t have the squad size this season and that’s something we’d like to address, but that doesn’t mean you bring in players for the sake of it.

“The overall thing is we’ve got a relatively young side and we haven’t had the wherewithal maybe to rotate as much as perhaps the other sides can do.

“Fair play to the top four because they have earned that right and maybe, in time, we might earn that right as well.”

O’Neill says there can be no room for sentiment on Sunday, despite the fact that a win will relegate Newcastle.

Any other outcome could act as a lifeline to former Villa skipper Gareth Southgate and Middlesbrough, who O’Neill has a lot of respect for.

“We have got to try and win the Newcastle game,” he said.