Martin O’Neil has been describing it as his most important week since joining Aston Villa and while I wouldn’t rush to disagree, with our season apparently continually hinging on our next game, which weeks aren’t important?

However, with a resurgent Everton now chasing on our heels, three points against Burnley tomorrow are, well, just as important as they were before Everton beat Man Utd today. It remains to be seen whether Everton can maintain their form should Landon Donovan return to MLS – and I certainly hope he does given their turnaround with him in the side – but it’s clear that they’re doing their best to make this about 8 teams at the top of the table, not 7.

Currently occupying 7th place, we’re only 3 points behind Man City in 4th and I’d prefer that we could keep our focus on catching them instead of casting a worried eye over our shoulder at Everton. Hey, I said this was from Captain Obvious, what sort of stunning insight were you expecting here?

We have the irritating distraction of the FA Cup replay against Crystal Palace on Wednesday, but that at least should provide the option of player rotation. The problem with this tie is that a win would provide the tantalizing prospect of a quarter final encounter against either Reading or WBA. Just how much rotation can MON risk?

Of course, capping off the week, and obviously the most important game of the three, is the Carling Cup final against Man Utd on Sunday.

8 days. 3 games. All of them vitally important in very different ways.

It’s definitely a major challenge for the manager, but it’s great to have such problems at Villa. It’s not been this way for quite some time so I hope that MON gets cut a little slack should he not manage to get every decision absolutely spot on since he’s the one that brought us to this situation.

The thing is, it’s easy to question those decisions after the event and claim that you would have done this or wouldn’t have done that, but give some serious thought to how you would approach these three games and I’d be very interested to hear how you would prioritise this week and why.