Aston Villa missed a glorious chance to pile the pressure on their rivals in the race for fourth spot after being held by ten-man Manchester United.

Boss Martin O’Neill cited tiredness in the second half as one of the reasons why they couldn’t make their numerical advantage count which seems a bit disappointing, from a Villa point of view at least, considering United played nearly an hour a man down.

Of course there are few teams better than the Premier League champions at given a perfect demonstration at playing a game with ten, and for long spells it looked as if Villa were the team with the disadvantage.

But Villa didn’t quite have the ambition and were overly cautious, and this attitude may well cost them fourth spot. At the moment, nobody seems to want it.

Then again if they really went for it and ended up losing O’Neill would have incurred a bigger wrath from the support. But the side that trounced Liverpool at Anfield, nullified United at Old Trafford and showed the guts to come from behind and beat Chelsea at home this season seem to be backing off at the worst possible time.