Wow!! It took a penalty shoot out to settle this one, but Aston Villa will be in the next round of the Carling Cup after beating Sunderland 3 -1 from the spot. Brad Guzan has emerged as an absolute super hero after not only saving 3 penalties during the shoot out, but also one in the 85th minute and also made a number of crucial saves during the game! An unbelievable performance!!

In case you weren’t aware, the club provided no less than 34 coaches to run Villa fans up to Sunderland for tonight’s Carling Cup tie, a sign that they wanted to progress in this competition. Though it will be a late night, they’ll all be glad the made the trip after being treated to such drama.

Good job too. The Stadium of Light has the 3rd largest capacity in the Premiership, but by my reckoning the 27,666 crowd means the ground was less than 57% full.

Martin O’Neill made only three changes to the XI who had started the last three Premiership matches with the manager backing up his recent praise for Guzan by giving the young American a start. Promises that Emile Heskey and Nigel Reo-Coker were not frozen out of the starting line up were also fulfilled.

Starting XI: Guzan, Cuellar, Dunne, Collins, Warnock, Milner, Reo-Coker, Petrov, Young, Agbonlahor, Heskey. Subs: Friedel, Sidwell, Delph, Shorey, Young, Carew, Beye.

MON brought Carew on in place of Heskey with 13 minutes of regular time to play and Delph came on for Reo-Coker for the 30 minutes of extra time. Sidwell took Petrov’s place for the final 5 minutes, with Richard Dunne taking the arm band.

The draw for the fifth round, or quarter finals if you prefer, will take place after tomorrow’s tie and the matches will be played during week commencing 30th November ’09.

Man Utd, Blackburn, Portsmouth and Spurs will also be in the draw, plus the winners of Arsenal vs Liverpool, Chelsea vs Bolton and Man City vs Scunthorpe, all being played tomorrow night.

But the night will be remembered for Brad Guzan’s amazing, game winning display. He’s definitely got a very bright future ahead of him and MON’s recent assessment is almost prophetic. The American was rightly the first person O’Neill congratulated when he ran on the field after the final whistle.

Owner Randy Lerner will be very glad he laid on the coaches and also made the trip himself.