O’Neill adds to admirers

MARTIN O’NEILL is insistent that he has no interest in walking out on Aston Villa, but more results like this and it will not just be England wanting to speak to the Irishman.

O’Neill sent out a side bristling with pace, power and purpose to overwhelm Middlesbrough, who now have very real relegation worries, having only been kept out of the bottom three by Sunderland’s freak defeat at Everton.

And yet it is a mark of O’Neill’s ambition that he professed himself unimpressed with aspects of Villa’s play, after a result earned by goals from John Carew, Olof Mellberg and Gabriel Agbonlahor.