I didn’t get to see any of the Under 19’s today, but as I was leaving the house earlier I did note that England were losing 1-0 to the extremely impressive French and Holland were being held 0-0 by Austria. Even if England could get back on terms it wouldn’t be enough, they needed Austria to win.

Well, that’s exactly what happened.

With three minutes left in Mondeville, Ricky van Rhijn brought Georg Teigl down in the box and Hertha Berlin’s Marco Djuricin converted from the spot to give Austria the unlikely win.

Wycombe’s Matthew Phillips popped up three minutes into injury time in Saint-Lo to grab the late equaliser for England, setting up a semi-final appointment with Spain on Tuesday.

To be frank, I both expected and hoped to be writing a post entitled “England’s Loss Is Villa’s Gain” which would have focused on the bright side of having our three players back in time to take part in some of the remaining pre-season schedule.

As it turns out, the two Nathans get the opportunity to play against a very good Spanish side heavily supplied by the Barcelona academy, but Andreas Weimann’s tournament is indeed over.

As I’ve mentioned before, both of the English lads missed all of pre-season as England went all the way to the U-19 final last year, but Weimann did take part and was part of squad took part in the Peace Cup tournament, starting in the final against Juventus.

I’m not sure if MON would want to give him some additional time off, but maybe he’ll be included in the party travelling to Portugal for the games against Feyenoord and Benfica. Those two games will take place within 24 hours of each other so a full squad would be useful and firepower has been something we’ve been short on so far.

Next up, Walsall on Tuesday. I wouldn’t expect Weimann to be involved in that one, but we will have Heskey, Warnock and Guzan coming back on Monday.

As for Milner, well it’s highly unlikely that he’ll be in Bescot next week, especially after the reaction just hearing his name drew from the Villa support at half time in Dublin today, but we shall see.