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Wembley Stadium

Saturday evening was not the first time this season that I have sat in a press conference after an FA Cup tie featuring Aston Villa and heard a manager bemoan a decision by an official that he feels cost him the match.

I remember only too vividly spending several minutes of a very wet Valentine's Day in the company of a very angry Neil Warnock - the current QPR boss but then manager of Crystal Palace - who was raging incandescently about linesman Trevor Massey, the man who had wrongly awarded the corner that led to Villa's 87th-minute equaliser in an eventful fifth-round tie that finished 2-2.

Villa, of course, went on to win the replay but, even before then, there was precious little public sympathy for Warnock, perhaps down to the manner of his rant, in which he called for Massey to be banned.

At the time, his opposite number Martin O'Neill agreed his side had received "a bit of luck" but pointed out that those sort of decisions even themselves out over the course of a game, let alone a season. A fair comment, as most people - including me - thought.

So when the tables are turned - as they were at Wembley this weekend when O'Neill's side were early in their eventual Cup semi-final defeat by Chelsea - is anything different this time when it is him throwing his toys out of the pram?

And are there any bigger issues at stake apart from another manager moaning about his misfortune?

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It is just two weeks since the agony of so it is probably stating the obvious to say that Aston Villa's players will have a point to prove when they face Chelsea again in Saturday's FA Cup semi-final.

That mauling also resulted in a period of soul-searching at Villa Park for manager Martin O'Neill and his squad that went far deeper than putting right an embarrassing defeat.

Taking any positives whatsoever from the Chelsea debacle appeared unlikely in the immediate aftermath of what O'Neill described as his "worst day in football".

And things got even worse a couple of days later when and was about to resign.

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