The mood going into this game is markedly different from a few days ago. Funny what a little victory at Anfield can do, isn’t it?

On a serious note though, Martin O’Neill has voiced his confusion at the half-time boos the team received during the opening day match at home to Wigan. ‘Confusion’ is probably the wrong word – to quote the manager; he was “staggered” at the fans’ reaction, as was I.

However, Villa go into this game needing to turn a one goal deficit around and the home fans can play no small part in lifting the team to glory. Aside from a freak early goal, the performance in Austria, while far from awe inspiring, wasn’t far away from a typical European away night and, combined with the Liverpool performance, I’m confident that there’s enough in the tank to take care of Rapid at Villa Park.

But it will certainly be easier if they feel the home fans are with them, rather than against them. It would be great to take the pressure off their shoulders and hear the Villa Park faithful cheer the lads on.

A potential doubt for Thursday night might be Ashley Young, who was brought off at Anfield with 10 minutes or so to go with a slightly twisted knee. He has said it was just a precaution, but it was giving him some discomfort.

If Ash isn’t fit, Villa aren’t without options any longer. Heskey or Delph could easily play on the left, especially if MON again opts for the five-man midfield. Of course, James Milner could also play on that side with Albrighton playing on the right, or even Gabby on the right with Heskey or Carew in the middle.

This sort of versatility will be invaluable over the course of a long season and we still have Stewart Downing to come too.

The conventional wisdom is that Villa play better in some variation of 4-5-1 – I wouldn’t entirely disagree with that – and with MON apparently reverting to that formation at Anfield, we may well expect to see it again in this game. However, hopefully no one will lose sight of the fact that a team can’t play every game of an entire season with the same tactics. There will be times when Villa will need to play something more resembling a 4-4-2 and, if they’re going mount a serious challenge on the top teams, they really ought to be able to play two recognised strikers at times.

That’s just my way of prefacing the potential appearance of the much maligned four man midfield, at least for a portion of the match, should it appear. Let’s face it, if the game has been tucked up in a reasonable amount of time, it wouldn’t hurt to shift the bodies around when they’re feeling confident.

The back four had their moments, but were much more impressive at Anfield than they’ve looked of late. Again, there aren’t a lot of alternatives, so injury aside, we should probably expect the same line up.

However, one or more of them may well have an eye over their shoulder as it’s recently become pretty clear that Aston Villa are aggressively seeking to acquire the services of Richard Dunne, Sylvain Distan and Stephen Warnock – fees reportedly agreed in all three cases.

In fairness, assuming that Bouma will shortly be available again, it’s probably only Nickey Shorey who will be concerned about his long term future at the club. With Davies’ shoulder looking pretty weak of late, there’s plenty of room for himself, Cuellar, Dunne and Distan in the squad.

I’m going to stick my neck out for once and say that I’m as sure as I can be that Guzan will again be given the chance between the sticks.

Finally, I imagine that we will all be again watching the performance as much as anything else. As I’ve already said, I’m confident that whoever MON sends out will have enough quality to beat Rapid by the required two clear goals at home, but we’d surely all like to have the apparent resurgence in form confirmed.

The draw for the group stage will be made on Friday in Monaco. Assuming that Villa get past Rapid Vienna, I would expect them to be drawn from the third seed pot. You can see all the major dates leading right up to the final here. Once the draw has been made I will update the group details, but for now you can assume that Villa will be ‘team 3’ in the group stage fixtures I’ve listed.