Today is Match Day 1 in the Europa League and it’s a massive shame that Aston Villa won’t be taking part. It’s ironic that a strong, balanced squad has finally been assembled just in time to miss out on a major competition that would have stretched the squads of the past.

I was reading Martin O’Neill’s reflections today and he is equally sad to be missing out and also recognises the opportunity to utilize the squad that’s slipped through his fingers.

It’s great to have this time to work with the players. But saying that, with the Europa League matches coming up, it’s the first time I have really missed those adventures.

I said some time ago that I wanted to integrate the younger players with the more senior ones in Europe. That would have been nice. When you have a decent squad to pick from, you look a little forlornly at it.

My sentiments exactly.

I’ll have an associated post up shortly regarding the squad cap rules due to be introduced by the Premiership next season. Villa are generally regarded to be in decent shape with the “home grown” elements because of MON’s apparent policy to favour buying young, British players, but there’s once again an irony in finally building a squad with some real depth just as a cap is going to be placed on the number of players in the first team squad.

If you include all of the youngsters who have first team squad numbers there’s currently 37 players that MON could call upon. How many of these are effectively playing for their place in a 25 man Premiership squad next season and don’t have the extra dozen or so games that European competition may have offered to show what they’ve got?

It’s surely going to be a factor the deeper we go into this season.