The good news is that Aston Villa won, making two on the trot now. The bad news is that the 2-1 scoreline wasn’t enough and the Villans have been knocked out of Europe at the first hurdle on the dreaded away goals rule. Actually, it’s not so much a crash as a whimper.

The reality is that we’ve witnessed 6 hours of competitive football from Villa in 2009/10 and we’ve seen one solitary goal from open play. Pretty uninspiring, especially since it wasn’t a case of chances just not going in… there have been few chances to speak of.

I won’t try to hide it, I’m bitterly disappointed that we couldn’t get past Rapid Vienna and into the group stage. Fortunately, we can’t look at Rapid’s position in the draw and get a frustrating glimpse of what might have been – Vienna are effectively ranked 41st out of the 48 teams remaining and will be drawn from pot 4, while Villa would have been drawn from pot 3.

I was going to dwell on that subject for a moment, but there’s actually enough to discuss there for a whole separate post.  Click here for a more technical analysis of the tournament winners and losers at this stage.

On the positive side, it was good to see Carew back. I’d hope that might temper the apparent enthusiasm for conspiracy theories surrounding his absence, but we all know it will only last until next time he’s out. If MON’s hoping to hear the back of Moscow incident, I’m hoping to hear the end of the bloody Rocket Club incident.

I mentioned the one goal from open play earlier – it came from the big Norwegian’s boot and he had been knocking on the door for a few minutes beforehand. Apart from Carew, who else is going to score goals without a set piece? It won’t be Heskey very often, we all know that.

Speaking of Heskey, he seemed to play a somewhat deeper role in this game, at least during the first half hour or so, making it more of a 4-4-1-1 than the 4-4-2 the team sheet suggested.  There’s a lot of discussion about formations right now, but as I said in the preview, all teams need to be able to play with two strikers at least some of the time and we shouldn’t be surprised to see it feature at some point in this game.  Hey, we won, so don’t tell me that you can’t win with 4-4-2.

What did give me concern looking at the starting line up was Petrov and Delph together in the middle again.  Don’t get me wrong, Delph looks like a real talent, but he’s not ready to be 50% of our central midfield yet.  Sorry, but he isn’t.  I’m also still convinced that this pairing is a good reason for the loss to Wigan, not so much that it was a four man midfield, but who the central two were.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying either player isn’t a decent player, far from it, I’m simply saying it isn’t the right pairing at the moment.  That will surely change, but if Petrov isn’t on top of his game – and I’d argue that he wasn’t all that brilliant in this game – then that leaves too much work for young Delph, who can’t be expected to have the skills yet.

On the subject of Delph though, there was a moment late in the game where he took on several players around the edge of the box and beat them before sending a sweet, curving ball towards goal, forcing a decent save from the keeper.  From the moment it left his foot, I thought it was a goal all the way.  The kid’s definitely got some mad skills, don’t even worry about that.

On the flanks, Milner and Ash both showed that they’re the real quality in this side at the moment.  Ash “won” both of the first half penalties and there might have been a bit of karma about missing the first.  Not sure how much we should read into his confidence levels from his apparent willingness to step aside to let James Milner take the second spot kick.  Hopefully nothing.

The back four were OK.  Shorey, for his faults, is noticeably more involved in the final third than Habib Beye and has also inherited Barry’s corner and deep free kick duties. Cuellar continues to confirm that we have a quality player on our hands and highlighted his worth in the team with a goal line clearance with Guzan stranded.

Curtis Davies was again the victim of his arm and torso being separated at the shoulder. He’s such an old hand at it now that he actually ran straight to the dressing room, indicating to the bench that he needed substituting on the the way. Shane Lowry was brought on for the last 7 minutes and was perfectly adequate, as always.

It might just be me, but Guzan looked a little on the nervous side this time out. Maybe it’s nothing, but he just didn’t seem as comfortable in his surroundingss as he’s looked previously. He still pulled out a couple of top class saves and there’s no questioning his willingness to battle it out to the last when it comes down to a goal mouth scramble.

As an overall performance, ignoring what the scoreline meant, this wasn’t a bad performance by any stretch of the imagination. However easy it is to lose sight of, this was a win after all. The main concern, as is often the case, is that this team lacked the killer instinct once again.

Carew had been the spearhead of a period of pressure leading up to the second goal, but after that goal Rapid were allowed to keep their hopes up. Obviously they just needed the one goal and they’d be through and they didn’t let their heads drop.

I’m not exactly sure how the game could have been smothered, or if it’s even in Martin O’Neill’s nature, but somehow the opposition should have been made to feel that they were fortunate to get that goal in Austria – which they were – and that when Villa took the lead their chance of staying in this competition had evaporated. That doesn’t have to mean simply subbing an attacker for a more defensive player, there’s surely more subtle ways of killing the game off?

Nevertheless, Villa will not be competing in the Europa League this season and obviously that means that the focus will remain on the three domestic competitions which cannot be a bad thing at this stage of the season.

Ultimately, if Villa make a strong run in one or both domestic cups and finish the season at the sharp end of the league then this will soon be forgotten. If not, well at least we won’t be talking about the Russian capital any longer!!