Aston Villa manager Martin O’Neill has reiterated that his team will undergo a revamp in the summer. The Midlands club are fighting for a place in Europe and in all probabilities, the Bluey-Purples – as their mothers call them – will be able to secure a UEFA Cup berth for themselves.
O’Neill, who has tasted European football when he was the manager at Scottish giants Celtic, says:
I know people are talking about us possibly going into Europe and there is a group of sides with nothing between us at the moment. It’s getting to a stage where my expectations are pretty high. I want them to be high but we’ve got to live up to them.
Liverpool have got the strong advantage (for the final Champions League berth) because, to be honest, they have the best and strongest squad of the sides competing and you would say Everton are the next best.
We’ve been amazing in the sense that we don’t have a big squad and we wouldn’t have been able to cope with a lot of things such as more games and injuries.
The injuries might still happen to us but I wouldn’t want to be having that small squad for another season.
We tried to strengthen in January and it didn’t materialise but that’s something I’ll address in the summer if we can.
Villa have already applied for the Intertoto Cup and club chairman Randy Lerner is set to pour easy cash into the club in the summer to build a strong squad that can sustain itself in Europe. Seems like these are good times at Villa Park.