Carling Cup final: Martin ONeill seething over criticism of Aston Villas record

By Oliver Brown Published: 8:00AM GMT twenty-seven Feb 2010

Wounded pride: Martin O"Neill has been angry by Arsene Wenger"s comments Photo: ACTION IMAGES

Sunday"s Carling Cup last opposite Manchester United encapsulates the resurgence he has engineered at Aston Villa so seemingly that it seems cross for anybody to subject the scale of his accomplishment. Anybody, that is, solely Arsène Wenger.

The Arsenal manager"s hardhearted views about Villa"s swell relate around the plush suites of their Bodymoor Heath precision formidable with a inflection to opposition any pre-match residence that O"Neill, with his antique and infrequently baffling approach with words, could plan at Wembley.

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Wenger, progressing this month, had only watched his organisation thwarted at Villa Park in the dourest of 0-0 draws when, ever the representative provocateur, he asked: "If you win the League Cup, can you overtly contend you have won a trophy?

"We have got out of the organisation stages in the Champions League for 10 seasons in a row, that is 3 times some-more formidable than winning the League Cup five times. And finishing third in the joining is some-more formidable than winning the League Cup."

O"Neill ought to jot down those words, step outward the main opening at Bodymoor with a tin of red paint, and wall scrawl them in 10-foot-high letters on the wall, for all the sarcasm they have influenced in him and his men. It is not so most the patronising tinge of Wenger"s argument, or the demeaning of Villa"s fast-growing stature, as the arrange hypocrisy.

Such a virtuoso as O"Neill has not lost the impulse in Jan 2006 when Wenger was so unfortunate to allege in this unequivocally foe that, for the second leg of a semi-final opposite Wigan, he comparison Thierry Henry for the Frenchman"s initial Carling Cup coming in 6 years.

Dennis Bergkamp featured, too, to underline the intent. While O"Neill contemplates this he pauses, tips his glasses, and afterwards delivers a curse riposte.

"I know that the Arsenal physical education instructor has been flattering sardonic all the time about the League Cup," he says. "I would have pronounced that the organisation he played opposite Wigan was very, unequivocally strong.

"So when it suits, it"s a good competition. And when it doesn"t suit, it"s not. That"s not my view. It"s an critical competition. Manchester United, I"m utterly sure, will margin as a clever a side as they presumably can on Sunday.

"If you had seen or experienced possibly of the dual semi-final matches in between Manchester City and United, if somebody had told those clubs that this prize was not a trophy, afterwards I think you would have been given short shrift.

"If United and Chelsea can provide this foe with the pinnacle apply oneself afterwards that would unequivocally be enough for me."

Perhaps O"Neill"s mind was flapping to his own unequaled League Cup record, that defied credit given his successes were all completed at clubs right away in the second harvesting machine of the game.

It was assumingly not enough that, as piece of Brian Clough"s all-conquering Nottingham Forest team, he laid his hands on the prize twice and reached the last in one alternative year.

No, he would replicate precisely that lapse in an additional dilemma of the East Midlands, when, at the helm of an overachieving Leicester City, he reached the last 3 times in 4 years, winning two.

"The League Cup has been unequivocally kind to me," O"Neill acknowledges. "I"ve managed to win it twice as a player, twice as a physical education instructor and been knocked about in a last dual alternative years. It will be seventh time around and patently I am flattering gratified that we are there."

O"Neill has captivated comparisons, not slightest from Burnley physical education instructor Owen Coyle, with his good mentor, Clough. The rule on that he insists at Villa, from moulding the organisation to each aspect of their preparations, confidently echoes the convention tender on him at the City Ground, and postulated with such ruthlessness at United by Sir Alex Ferguson, his counter at Wembley. Not that this will lessen the proclivity to frustrate Ferguson on the grand stage.

"I think that for the wellbeing of the bar in the evident future, it would be unequivocally good if we could do it," he says.

"The bar has been carnivorous of success and, deliberation it has a good history, contesting these sort of games in Feb would be a pointer that the bar is creation critical progress. It"s so important. It gives you a progress of confidence, a height to expostulate on. and a integrity to go and succeed.

"I"m anticipating this is the begin of something for this organisation given I think they honestly merit it. Getting to the last is unequivocally critical for us given the bar has had a flattering bad time of it really.

"In 1994, 1996 and 2000 there were 3 finals, dual joining cups and better by Chelsea in the FA Cup. There has been one FA Cup last given 1957.

"When I contend the bar has a great, good history, positively given 1982, and feat in the European Cup, you wouldn"t contend that"s a unusual record. It"s up to us to try to shift that. That, to me, would be the greatest inducement of all."