Last year, as Villa headed out to Spain to compete in the Peace Cup, Martin O’Neill left the trio of Agbonlahor, Milner & Gardner behind as they had been given a little extra time before reporting back after taking part in the European Under-21 Championship.

After spotting that Nathan Delfouneso had also been omitted from the travelling party, and doing a little digging, I found he and Nathan Baker were in Ukraine representing England Under 19’s in their European Championships.

The Under 21 tournament is held every two years, so that won’t affect our build up this year, but the Under 19 version is held every year and both Nathans have just been confirmed in the 18 man squad to travel to Normandy.

England’s group games will be against Austria on July 18th, Holland on July 21st and France (the hosts) on July 24th. The semi-finals are scheduled for July 27th with the final taking place on July 30th. If England make it all the way to the final, as they did last year – losing 2-0 to hosts Ukraine – it’s unlikely that the two players will be available for Villa’s pre-season fixtures until the final game, Valencia at Villa Park on August 6th. It’s possible that they could travel down to the Algarve for the Guadiana Cup game against Benfica, but I doubt that’s likely.

With the World Cup still in action and following England’s appalling display, it’s difficult for me to begrudge two of our players taking part in this competition. In fact, it’s probably very good for their development in the longer term. On the other hand, Delfouneso is very much on the fringe of the Aston Villa first team now and I would imagine MON would be far more willing to get him on the pitch earlier in the season on the back of a strong pre-season showing. Which is to say, less likely without a decent pre-season with the rest of the team.

However, that’s idle speculation on my part and, in any case, the Europa League play-off matches will be played on August 19th & 26th and I’d be very surprised if Delfouneso wasn’t given a good run out in those games, assuming he’s fit and available.

MON has already made it quite clear that he had intended to use the Europa League to give some of the periphery players games last season and intends to do the same again this time out. It’s therefore very much in Nathan’s own interests to go all out to make sure we don’t fall at the first hurdle this time. If we can get into the group stages this season, it almost guarantees 6 games that young striker can expect some significant pitch time.