• Sullivan speaking after meeting manager Gianfranco Zola
• Benni McCarthy ‘would be good’, says co-owner David Gold

West Ham United’s chairman David Sullivan has pledged to help secure two new strikers to bolster Gianfranco Zola’s squad before the transfer window closes.

Sullivan and business partner David Gold, who acquired 50% of the club in a deal which gives them operational and commercial control, met Zola and assistant manager Steve Clarke yesterday to discuss the future. Sullivan will look to free up a sum believed to be around £8m, and has said no players need to be sold.

“I was hugely impressed with Gianfranco and Steve,” Sullivan told the London Evening Standard.

“It is so great to meet a man who wants to work with us and make the team better. He has a ‘can-do’ attitude, but with a pragmatic approach. He’s a really nice guy. I believe he can be a great manager. We agreed we need at least one striker by the Portsmouth match and the second by the end of the window.”

Blackburn’s Benni McCarthy, 32, almost joined West Ham from Porto five years ago, and has been linked with a switch to east London. Co-owner David Gold said: “He would be a good acquisition, if that could be achieved. It’s possible, but all strikers that are available as we speak are possible.”

There had been speculation that the likes of centre-back Matthew Upson, goalkeeper Robert Green, striker Carlton Cole and midfielder Scott Parker would have to be sold off to help balance the books. But Sullivan said the pressure to sell was gone.

“Matthew is the captain and his return to the team in recent weeks has coincided with improved performances,” said Sullivan. “And we all agreed that Scott, despite a lot of interest, is going nowhere. He is a wonderful player, the heartbeat of the team. Despite the difficult times, he has always been up for the challenge, always fighting for the badge.”

Sullivan intends to deal with transfers himself, leaving the future of technical director Gianluca Nani unclear. The arrival of Karren Brady as vice-chairman completes the Birmingham City connection at Upton Park, but her salary will be met by Sullivan and Gold rather than the club.

The duo will themselves not take a wage as the new regime look to cut costs and reduce the enormous debt levels, which are owed to both banks and other clubs, including settlements to Sheffield United over the Carlos Tevez affair and former manager Alan Curbishley.

“We are fully behind the manager, but I do not want to go into all staff,” Sullivan said. “There may be some changes at some level, we are going to look at all sorts of things. We do not rush into decisions. There has to be some savings here. This is a club haemorrhaging money. There may have to be economies, and there is no point saying otherwise. To put things in perspective, I will be earning nothing, David will be earning nothing.

“We are personally paying Karren’s wages for the next 12 months so she is not a burden to the club at all. We are not coming here with baggage which will cost the club money, we are all going to make a contribution at zero cost to the club.”

Sullivan openly admits buying West Ham made no business sense, but believes the future can be bright.

“We are inheriting liabilities and are going to have to work through them. Every stone you turn is a negative to the cash-flow of the club. We are taking over an incredibly bad situation. However, we will sort it out because we are good at it.”

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• Manager says win important ‘because we had to reduce gap’
• Redknapp rues missing of ‘glorious opportunity’

Rafael Benítez believes Liverpool have shown their rivals for a Champions League place that they will remain in the fight for fourth until the end of the season. Benítez’s side lifted the gloom around Anfield last night with a deserved 2-0 defeat of Tottenham Hotspur.

Liverpool are now a point behind Harry Redknapp’s fourth-placed side after two goals from Dirk Kuyt brought Benítez a precious victory in his attempts to keep his side in the Champions League. The Liverpool manager said the race for the final qualifying berth would include Tottenham, Manchester City and Aston Villa but, after another trying period as manager and despite fielding a team weakened by injury at Anfield, he was adamant his team would continue to challenge and improve as the campaign progresses.

“It was important for everyone here because we had to reduce the gap and stay in the race,” said Benítez. “I think we can improve in the second half of the season. Normally [in] the last five years we do better in the second half of the league. It is a question of having all the players available and, if not, seeing the players work as hard as they did tonight. Everyone knows Liverpool are a good team and it was just a question of time to start winning games and showing our quality. Other teams are also strong but now they know the race will be with four teams.”

The Liverpool manager was full of praise for the work rate and desire shown by his players against Tottenham, and reserved special praise for Kuyt. “Dirk works very hard, he could maybe have scored four goals tonight,” he added. “Always his commitment is 100% so we are really pleased for him too. It was important for us to score early. We were playing well but in the first half we were not in control, although we had the better chances. The second half was more clear. After the first goal they had to go forward and left spaces, which was good for us.”

Redknapp said that his team had missed “a glorious opportunity” to establish a seven-point lead over an injury-plaguedLiverpool, and criticised Howard Webb’s decision to disallow a Jermain Defoe goal at the start of the second half, for offside.

The Tottenham manager said: “I’ll probably sit up at home tonight reading the rule book for a couple of hours and see what the rules actually are. The referee nor the linesman seemed to know – they probably phoned a friend. Is he active, is it second phase; there are so many rules now. We have been on a good run so losing one game doesn’t mean we are out of it, but this was a great opportunity for us here. I’m disappointed.”

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• Bolton manager furious over Arsenal equaliser at Emirates
• Home team defended by manager over failure to stop play

Owen Coyle last night described William Gallas’s challenge on Mark Davies in the build-up to Arsenal’s equalising goal as “akin to assault” with the Bolton Wanderers midfielder departing on crutches with, at best, severe damage to his ankle ligaments.

The home side scored while Davies lay prone on the turf, with Arsène Wenger moved to apologise for Gallas’s foul in the aftermath and admit regret that Davies’s departure on a stretcher had been accompanied by jeers and some taunted cheers from vocal sections of the home support. “You don’t want to hear that,” said the Frenchman.

An initial scan appeared to reveal ligament damage, but Davies will discover whether the joint is fractured today. “It was akin to assault and changed the game,” said Coyle. “It’s clearly a foul. It’s closer to a red card than anything else. The fact the referee’s not seen that, and the lad’s prostrate on the ground, and Arsenal being full of ‘fair play’ as we keep hearing yet carried on playing and score on the break … It’s a terrible challenge. I could accept it if Gallas had got a bit of the ball, but he’s touched absolutely none of it.”

The Bolton manager confronted the referee, Alan Wiley, on the final whistle to query why a free-kick had not been awarded. “It’s fair to say that what he said was that he never saw it,” said the Bolton manager. “I was 40 yards away and I saw it. I’d suggest he was five or 10 [yards away]. Maybe he was at a bad angle. I’ve seen red cards for less. Gallas knows he’s caught him, and Mark is clearly in agony.”

If Wiley did not see the challenge, there remains the possibility that the FA could scrutinise the incident and sanction Gallas. “I’m sorry if the tackle was not good. Really, I am,” said Wenger. “But there are two things I’ve heard just now. One, that [Coyle] was not happy with the tackle. I’m sorry the tackle was not a good one, and I apologise. But the second thing I heard is that we should have stopped the play, and I think that’s unfair because the players did not know what was happening behind them.

“You can’t kick the ball out every time a player is down. That’s why they changed the rules, and the referee was in a strong position. If you remember the Everton game [earlier this month]: Denilson went down and Everton broke and could have made it 3-1, but I said that was OK, and that was a much more obvious situation. But we got some tackles, some big ones, as well and we had to cope with it. I’m sorry if it’s a foul. It didn’t look dirty from outside but, if it’s a foul, it’s a foul.”

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• Newmarket handler ends five-year partnership
• 2008 champion apprentice William Buick in line for job

Leading Flat trainer John Gosden has split with stable jockey Jimmy Fortune and is expected to appoint William Buick as first-choice rider for his Newmarket stable.

“Mr Gosden phoned me today, we had a little chat and it’s been decided that I won’t be riding for him this year,” Fortune said last night.

“I didn’t have a retainer and there has been no falling out, but John felt that since the situation with the jockeys at the Breeders’ Cup had arisen, there had been a bit of a wedge driven between us.”

Fortune first started riding for Gosden on a regular basis in 2005, having returned from a 10-month absence after a back operation to replace an inflamed disc.

The pair quickly struck up a successful association and in 2007 Fortune rode his first Classic winner when the Gosden-trained Lucarno took the St Leger.

The following year, the highlight was his Group One race double at Ascot on the Gosden-trained Raven’s Pass (Queen Elizabeth II Stakes) and Rainbow View (Fillies’ Mile).

However, it was later in 2008 that the first cracks emerged in Gosden’s ­relationship with Fortune when the jockey was passed over in favour of Frankie ­Dettori for the winning ride aboard Raven’s Pass in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

Gosden cited an issue with Fortune’s fitness but the jockey rode the Gosden-trained Red Spider in the Racing Post ­Trophy at Doncaster on the same day as the Breeders’ Cup.

The same situation arose again 12 months later when Gosden again elected to use other riders ahead of his own stable jockey at the Breeders’ Cup.

Visibly agitated when quizzed by ­reporters over the situation, Gosden said: “It was a very difficult decision and not one I found easy to make. It is not my fault that my normal jockey has not ­experienced racing on American ­racetracks. You saw Frankie Dettori win two races here last year. The owners see that he is available. To them, it is a no-brainer. It’s no fault of Jimmy’s but he has never ridden here.”

Fortune continued to ride for Gosden on the all-weather after the Breeders’ Cup and was expecting to resume his role next month as part of the build-up to the new turf season.

“Of course I am extremely disappointed,” he said. “It has been a good job and we have had five or six very successful years together but I feel as I am leaving on a high. Greater jockeys than me have lost their jobs before – Kieren Fallon and Mick Kinane have both experienced the same sort of thing and both of them didn’t look back afterwards.

“I’m only 37 years old, I feel good physically and, as they say, as one door closes another opens. I was planning to return in the ­middle of next month and that’s still what I would hope to be doing.

“Even in the last few hours, I have already had a couple of offers for other jobs. I am a very positive person and I am very positive about what the future holds for me.”

Neither Gosden nor Buick, the 2008 champion apprentice who rode 66 winners last year, could be contacted for comment last night.

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•’This was my response to them saying I was not worth it’
• FA plans to write to United ahead of Wednesday’s second leg

Carlos Tevez has accused his former Manchester United team-mate Gary Neville of being “disrespectful” for sparking their row in the Carling Cup semi-final yesterdayby commending Sir Alex Ferguson for not signing a player whose financial demands were “too big”.

Tevez was so incensed by Neville’s remarks he made a provocative gesture to the former England right-back after scoring the first of his two goals in Manchester City’s 2-1 first-leg victory. Neville responded by flashing his middle finger and though the Football Association is unlikely to take action against him it plans to write to United, asking the club to remind their players of their responsibilities before the return leg at Old Trafford on Wednesday.

“I just think Gary was very disrespectful which, to be fair, is out of character, but he didn’t know the whole story of why I left Manchester United and I believe I deserved his respect,” Tevez said last night. “We achieved a lot together at United, I was the second top scorer there in my first season at the club and I deserve respect from my fellow professionals.”

Neville, writing a column for the Times of Malta, had said of Ferguson that “he knows exactly what he’s doing and understands when a player’s time is up”. He added that he could not “disagree with Ferguson’s decision” even though United also lost their most penetrative player, Cristiano Ronaldo, last summer, and that “the manager has almost always been proved correct”.

Tevez said he was “hurt” by the comments but said it had inspired him to play well against United, and he defended his goal celebrations. “Football is a form of theatre and as far as I am concerned it was just a form of banter,” he said.

“There was nothing malicious intended whatsoever. I was not trying to incite anyone but I was entitled to say to Neville that he should have been more respectful. For the second goal I ran to the touchline and cupped my ears and looked up to the part of the ground where the United directors were sitting, and also to Ferguson in the dugout, because I wanted them to know this was my response to them saying I was not worth the money.

“People from United have been speaking about me publicly and criticising me but I wanted to do my talking on the pitch because that was the best way of responding to all these people, such as Neville, who were saying United were right to let me go.”

Tevez has now scored 13 goals in 11 games and he added: “I’m disappointed I received so much criticism at the start of the season. What people don’t realise is that I was playing with a very sore knee injury and needing injections every day.”

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• Interest rates on loans set to rise to 16.25%
• Parent company made profit of just £6.4m

Interest charges on loans taken out by the Glazer family and secured on their shareholding in Manchester United were this summer set to jump to an incredible rate of 16.25%, as the total debt now carried by the club stands at £716.6m.

The accounts, which provide a more complete picture than the figures released last week, show that, even allowing for a profit of £80.7m on player transfers, the parent company made a profit of £6.4m due to the need to service that debt.

The imminent hike in interest rates from 14.25%, due to take effect in August this year, would have further accelerated the rate at which the hedge fund debt – which has already swollen from £138m to £202.1m – “rolled up”.

Under the terms of a £500m bond scheme, the Glazers have made provisions to channel up to £127m back into the parent company in the first year alone to start paying down that debt. The Red Football Joint Venture figures, filed at Companies House, are likely to be seized on by critics of the Glazer regime as evidence of United’s reduced spending power.

Although turnover rose from £256m to £278m, only a fraction of that £22m increase was spent on players wages, which rose by just £1.8m.

The club has trumpeted its low wages to turnover ratio of 44% as a signal of its robust financial health but fans may see it as further evidence of the Glazers regime failing to invest in the team, while paying off interest on the borrowings their take­over imposed on the club .

United’s financial situation was laid bare last week when the football club subsidiary published its accounts and launched a detailed prospectus for the bond issue.

In the first year the Glazers can potentially take £127m in cash out of Manchester United, including a £70m one-off transfer from the club’s reserves that would have been impossible under its existing agreements with lenders but is provided for under the terms of the bond. The amount owed to US hedge funds has been accumulating at 14.25% a year since August 2006 and according to the accounts, the £138m originally borrowed had already increased by £66.6m to £202.1m by June 2009.

Added to £509.5m in bank loans secured against the club and £5m in other borrowings, the total debt carried by the club – including the loans taken out by the Glazers and secured against their shareholding – stood at £716.6m by June 2009.

The accounts do show that the Glazers have delivered on their strategy of increasing turnover, through increased ticket prices and a more aggressive commercial strategy.

Club owned media rights showed growth of 37% and sponsorship income went up 48% on the previous year, not including a new £80m shirt deal with Aon.

City sources yesterday predicted that the bond offer, secured on the stadium and other assets, was likely to be fully subscribed at an estimated yield of between 8.75% and 9%. It is likely to be clear by the end of the week whether the scheme has succeeded. The publication of the bond document has sparked a fresh wave of anti-Glazer sentiment among supporters. The Manchester United Supporters Trust, long-standing critics of the Glazer takeover, said yesterday that it had recruited thousands of new members since the bond prospectus was circulated to prospective investors last week.

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• German car company’s academy converts board
• Homes and hotels at site may help with funding

If English coaches’ decade-long wait for a National Football Centre is brought to an end with the Football Association board’s final approval of the project later this year, it will be due in no small part to the effect of a visit to a BMW training facility near Reading last year.

There had been implacable opposition from professional-game representatives on the FA board, who felt the development of the NFC at Burton-on-Trent would be a waste of the English game’s diminishing resources.

Even David Sheepshanks, the man who led the delivery of the NFC project, stood against the idea. But that changed when the board visited the BMW academy at Wokefield Park, where a De Vere hotel has been built in order to cash in on required occupancy from the car manufacturer, for its apprentices.

The trip is said to have helped convert FA board members, not least Sheepshanks,. Now the business model for Burton, a 330-acre site the FA has held since 2001, is broadly the same as for Wokefield Park. Four hotel operators are said to be interested in building two facilities – one three-star, the other four and providing 230 rooms – on the St George’s Park land. It is hoped that a hotelier partnership will take care of at least half of the £70m required to complete the project.

Another eight-figure sum is expected from the development of 30 large family homes on the site while public grants and sponsorship input from Umbro are also described as “significant” to the delivery of the NFC. But even if all that finance can be raised there is still a shortfall of up to £20m. That means the FA’s finances must improve or Sheepshanks’ enthusiasm will have to be shared by other sponsors before construction can get under way.

Storrie silenced

Peter Storrie was in court for 20 minutes yesterday to hear that he must wait until the end of the next football season before his case goes to trial. There was enough time for him to be warned by the judge by the judge not to repeat his previous public comments about the charges against him. A pleas hearing will take place in April with the main main trial not until May 2010. Authorities are still weighing up whether to try him alongside Harry Redknapp and Milan Mandaric – which would take eight weeks – or in a separate, three-week process.

England expects

Official England supporters’ club members have still not been told if they have been successful in their with applications for World Cup tickets, though notification had been expected on Monday. That is because the FA has still not received a sign off from Fifa and its tickets-and-hotels partner, Match. The indications are that up to 10,000 England fans might travel for games. Even so, the 2010 World Cup looks set to be the most undersubscribed tournament in recent history. The Germany’s football federation has revealed that it has sold only 579, 655 and 682 tickets for their group-stage matches against Australia, Serbia and Ghana.

Twenty20 short of fans

Things do not look good for the International Cricket Council’s World Twenty20 tournament in the West Indies in April. Remembering the disastrous attendances for the region’s 2007 World Cup, there seems no chance of replicating the 96% capacities across the board which were achieved at the tournament’s last edition, in this country last year. The tournament director, Robert Bryan, said: “Coming into 2010 we have seen increased interest in the tournament with more fans inquiring about and indeed buying tickets.” A spokeswoman did not return Digger’s call after being asked how many tickets had been sold so far.

Sony stumped

Indian Premier League cricket chiefs yesterday signed a streaming deal with YouTube that will provide live coverage of matches anywhere in the world, outside of the USA, where a previous internet-streaming deal with Willow TV will prevail. But for some reason there do not appear to be the same considerations for Sony Entertainment TV in India, which was said to have signed a $1bn, 10-year deal with the IPL for exclusive broadcast of matches in that country. Last night, no one from IPL or SET was available to explain why the broadcaster was so unruffled by this territorial intrusion. With only 11 of 67 available players bought at the IPL auction this week, might it just be that all the big-money boasts of the IPL do not stack up?

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The decision review system needs fine-tuning to quell the controversy over umpires’ poor calls

We have just had an enthralling series in South Africa in which, all too often, the decision review system, introduced to help quell controversy, dominated the headlines. The absence of a complete technology, for financial as well as logistical reasons, has not been helpful in cementing views on the efficacy of referrals.

Even with Hot Spot, which in its absence seems to have acquired a status of infallibility, it is not certain that controversy would have been avoided, given that some batsmen have been cute enough to avoid its thermal detection by turning their blades away from the camera when edging. The talk is of needing six cameras.

Anyway, Daryl Harper, an umpire with a Frank Spencer-like capacity for bumbling incompetence, has seen to it that “howlers” are not the exclusive domain of the two men in the middle. As Simon Barnes wrote in the Times, Harper was either a great advertisement for the system or a strong argument against it, depending on whether he was on the field or in the third umpire’s box.

Now, following series in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, it is time for the decision review system itself to get a review, something that will be high on the agenda of Dave Richardson, the International Cricket Council’s cricket manager, whose labour of love the whole thing is. He will find mixed feelings as to whether the system should even be used and if it does, whether responsibility for its implementation should be taken away from players, mindful that some umpires might then refer everything. At present, at least, they are expected to make their own calls first.

Richardson knows the system is a work in progress, with a deal of fine-tuning to be done. So here are some suggestions he might consider. First, the idea that there should be a time limit of, say, 15 seconds is not new but it needs reinforcing. In the series just gone, reviews generally took too long and the game stagnated. Secondly, every dismissal, even such as that in which Dale Steyn sent Jonathan Trott’s off-stump cartwheeling, in Cape Town, should be checked. This takes seconds, would occur at most only 40 times out of a possible 2,700 and could be communicated almost immediately by a signal into an earpiece. That Kevin Pietersen, for example, was out in the first Test to a no-ball is a nonsense when set alongside the rigmarole over everything else.

Thirdly, spectators need to get the same information as television viewers. Finally, the parameters for the “zone of certainty” within the stumps needs widening, to reduce anomalies. So, for example, depending on whether it is the fielding side or the batsman requesting a review, a batsman can be lbw to a ball shaving leg-stump, but not out to one in which the majority of the ball is hitting the same stump. At present, the zone is defined by the centre of the ball hitting a line down the middle of the outer stumps and the lower edge of the bails. I doubt that Paul Hawkins, who developed HawkEye, would want such an obviously large margin of error built in, so redefine the area to include instead the outside of the outer stumps and the top of the stumps.

One other thing struck me early on in the series, although this would require a change in the laws of the game. During the tense final part of the first Test at Centurion, Graham Onions was charged with facing the penultimate over of the game, from Morne Morkel. Cricinfo’s description of the first ball is thus: “94.1: Morkel to Onions, 1 no ball, no ball again. Onions rises with good length ball and defends.”

So far, so good. But this meant that despite him transgressing, and Onions playing a perfectly respectable shot, Morkel had six more goes at getting a wicket rather than five, which . That seems unfair. The extra run was irrelevant. Had Onions or Paul Collingwood, who faced the final deliveries of the over, been dismissed from the seventh ball, it would have been a travesty.

So I propose that following the umpires’ call of no ball, and any ensuing play, the batsman should have the chance to decide whether he accepts the no ball, with its extra run, (and perhaps avoids losing his wicket as a result) or turns it down, forfeiting the run but also precluding the extra ball. A bit like playing advantage in rugby.

Andy Flower, for one, thought the idea had merit, as did Mike Procter, the great South African all-rounder with whom I had dinner last week. Procter looked at me benevolently. “Selve,” he said, “I often used to go through the crease to tailenders and bounce them a couple of times to soften them up, knowing I still had six to get them out.”

You never cease to learn at this game.

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• Wylie and Johnson make hay as action returns at Newcastle
• More meetings may be offered in February

Graham Wylie, one of the richest men in the country, has had trouble keeping himself occupied recently. “Having been racing virtually every day for the last five years, to have a gap of five weeks was quite frustrating,” he said, on arrival here for the first race meeting in the north of England since 15 December.

Wylie’s many horses are trained by Howard Johnson, whose yard, west of Durham, has had more than its share of snow over the past month. “He kept them going, working them and giving them the odd canter, but clearly they’re not as fit as they should be, because they’ve been in their box for some time,” Wylie said. “Last night, he said he thinks they’re OK. Today will tell us.”

The answer would seem to be that ­Johnson has done an excellent job. The trainer, who did not attend, had a hat-trick that included an 11-1 success, while his other two winners carried Wylie’s colours. “They might be fit!” said the owner as Diamond Frontier hacked up by 11 lengths.

Still, Wylie rues so many missed opportunities. “What is a shame,” he said, “is that there were quite a few of them ready to run in mid-December. Some of them, we were hoping would be good enough to take down to Cheltenham. Now we’re not so sure, because we didn’t get that run into them.”

He was thinking in particular of Quwetwo, unraced since March, who was supposed to be a promising novice chaser this season. “He’s been ready since the beginning of December, we just haven’t got him out yet. It might be getting too late in the season for him.

“It’s one thing racing in the north but you need to have a very good horse to go down south and you only get a very good horse if you run them and see how good they are. And a lot of ours have only had one run or no runs. To miss five weeks’ racing sets you back a bit.”

The Levy Board has agreed to fund an extra five fixtures over the next month in an attempt to make up for some of those that have been wiped out by bad weather. The general feeling among racing professionals here, however, was that more could be done.

“It’s not enough,” said Alistair Whillans, whose Hawick yard is still covered by several inches of snow. He suggested a further half-dozen race-meetings in February, when northern horses would need a final prep-run before the Cheltenham Festival.

Peter Scudamore, partner and assistant trainer to the Kinross-based Lucinda Russell, urged the importance of staging additional fixtures in Scotland. “We’ve missed some Musselburghs and Ayrs that are important to a yard like ours, so that’s what I’d like the British Horseracing Authority to remember,” he said.

On behalf of the Levy Board, Alan Delmonte explained that there may eventually be support for more than five extra fixtures, but stressed the importance of gauging demand from racecourses and trainers. He pointed out that the levy fund has already taken a hit through lost fixtures and the Board was therefore nervous about paying a full price for additional race-meetings which will inevitably clash with others that have already been scheduled.

The first extra meeting will take place here on Monday, when the number of entries may help the Board make a final decision. It seems the course cannot expect a large crowd, since only 1,000 or so came through the gates yesterday, a disappointing figure after such a hiatus. Perhaps the locals have forgotten how to get to the track.

The emptiness of the stands hardly mattered to the Redcar trainer Keith Reveley, whose fortunes seem to have been completely turned around by the cold snap. Having sent out five winners in the entire season up to last week, he has had as many again since Saturday, following his double on this card.

“I think galloping in deep snow has probably fittened them up,” he said. “It’s been hard work and for some reason they seem to have really enjoyed it. It’s been a change for them.

“We’re only two miles from the sea but I haven’t bothered going to the beach because it means boxing them up in the very cold weather. I just thought I’d keep them warm and keep them exercised and, touch wood, it seems to have worked. You have to enjoy it while you can, because they’re a long time wrong!”

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• ‘The players grew up tonight’ says Aston Villa manager
• Allardyce says referee ‘major part of us not going through’

Martin O’Neill hailed Aston Villa’s first appearance in a major final for a decade by claiming that their 6-4 second-leg victory over Blackburn Rovers was the evening his young team “grew up”, after they had allowed two early goals.

But the Blackburn Rovers manager, Sam Allardyce, was furious, claiming that Stephen Warnock’s opener for Villa should not have been allowed. Allardyce strongly criticised the referee, Martin Atkinson, for failing to award a foul on Ryan Nelsen by Gabriel ­Agbonlahor. According to Allardyce, Atkinson was a “major part of us not getting through to the final”.

O’Neill preferred to focus on his team’s effort. Following their 7-4 aggregate win, the Ulsterman said: “It was an ­amazing game, no doubt. We started ­nervously and ­conceded two. All the great plans of ­closing the game down lasted about a minute and a half.” O’Neill had hoped simply to protect James Milner’s goal at Ewood Park last week, which had given Villa the lead going into this second leg.

O’Neill continued: “But we finally got a bit of life and when we got it back to 2-1 I always thought we could score more, I knew we were capable of getting back into the game. I’m genuinely delighted for the players. I think they grew up tonight. We made a lot of mistakes, even at 5-2, but I think it was the euphoria of the position. But this will give the players an enormous boost – we have some very good players, but very few have actually been in this position.

“Not too many nights like this have come along in the last 28 years,” O’Neill said, referring to the time elapsed since Villa’s European Cup ­triumph in 1982.

Nikola Kalinic’s 10th- and 26th-minute strikes had hushed the home crowd, putting Blackburn 3-2 ahead on aggregate and giving them one foot in next month’s final at ­Wembley, before Villa produced five goals in a row.

“They fought back brilliantly. ­Milner was sensational,” O’Neill said, referring to the man of the match, who scored a 40th-minute penalty and was influential in his new central-midfield berth. “He’s a character and a half. His game’s reached a new level, no doubt. He’s seeing the pass. That’s definitely his position.”

Milner said: “Obviously getting to a final’s fantastic, we’re moving ­forward. The fans were fantastic tonight, I don’t know what they were thinking when we were 2-0 down but they kept shouting and it’s great for them and for us as a ­football club – and hopefully we can go and win it.”

Allardyce admitted that he had to be careful of his words when ­criticising Atkinson’s performance. “It’s a bit difficult to take that we scored four goals and we’re not going to the final. The referee allowed a blatant foul on Ryan Nelsen to go unpunished,” he said.

Allardyce was also unhappy about Agbonlahor’s goal, Villa’s fourth, which arrived after Milner’s shot appeared to brush his arm. But O’Neill countered by claiming that Villa had been denied “two penalty kicks” at Ewood Park in the first leg.

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