Blackburn return to Villa Park in the Carling Cup tonight, but if it’s to be a repeat of the 6-4 thriller back in January, it will likely be for different reasons. Sam Allardyce has stated explicitly that the Premier League is their priority at all costs and after a bruising encounter with Fulham last weekend, on top of a Lancashire derby against Blackpool next weekend, Sam’s unlikely to field his strongest possible XI.

But neither will Houllier, who’s hit the ground running this week and already split the squad into two working groups in training: one focused on the Blackburn game tonight, the other working towards Wolves at the weekend. Both sides, then, will likely feature several youngsters and if fireworks were to occur, it will probably be from the periphery players trying make an impact. Especially the Villa lads in front of the new boss for the first time.

However, if you’re not going to Villa Park tonight, you’re not going to see this one. It looks like the Scunthorpe vs Man Utd and Chelsea vs Newcastle ties are televised and will therefore be available via dodgy Chinese streams, if that’s your bag, but the rest of the ties will not be.

Richard Dunne will definitely not be playing tonight after coming off at half time against Bolton last weekend. Dunne’s clearly not been match sharp all season, so I hope he’s given the time to get back to 100% before being thrown back in. Collins, Cuellar, Clark and Davies, so far as I know, are all fit and available, so it’s not as if we can’t afford to lose, him as was the case when the season got underway.

In other, unrelated, news this week, Nigel Reo-Coker was apparently offered the opportunity to to play for Sierra Leone in the African Cup of Nations qualifying match against South Africa, but he’s declined the invitation, according to his agent. Although he’s captained England at Under-21 level, under the more relaxed FIFA rules on eligibility these days, he still qualified for Sierra Leone at senior level, but apparently still has the ambition to earn a call up to the England senior side.

Another little piece of news floating around right now which seems to be of interest is that Gérard Houllier revealed in yesterday’s press conference that he’s yet to actually put pen to paper on his contract at Villa Park. I can’t quite fathom why that would be such a big deal, everyone involved has jumped through hoops and bent over backwards to make this appointment, does anyone really think that one party or another will renege now because there isn’t a signature somewhere?

More importantly, I think Houllier successfully pinpointed our major failing in recent times when he talked yesterday about our need to shed some of our “nice image”. No more Mr Nice Guy. If he’s talking about our failure to finish teams off when we have them on the ropes, and I think he is, I’m in absolute agreement that that should be the primary focus right now. We have the talent, we have the ability, we play good football, we just don’t capitalize when we should and let teams back into games they have no business getting back into.

So, I’ll update the team news below when I have it, plus anything else of interest that may crop up between now and kick off tonight.

Villa Starting XI: Guzan, Lichaj, Clark, Cuellar, Warnock, A Young, Reo-Coker, Sidwell, Bannan, Carew, Agbonlahor.

Subs: Friedel, Delfouneso, Davies, Salifou, Beye, Osbourne, Heskey.

Blackburn Starting XI: Bunn, Olsson, Givet, Nelsen, Emerton, Pedersen, Nzonzi, Benjani, Hoilett, Jones, Chimbonda.

Subs: Fiedling, Samba, Kalinic, EH Diouf, Linganzi, Morris, M Diouf.