Mat Kendrick: A chance for Martin O'Neill to put the record straight

Apr 8 2010 By Mat Kendrick

Martin O’Neill might have missed his vocation by putting the legal ambitions of his adolescence on hold to enjoy a glittering career in top class football over the past four decades.

But the Aston Villa boss will be motivated by a burgeoning sense of injustice when he takes on arguably his most important managerial case of all in the FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea at Wembley this weekend.

There’s Villa’s Carling Cup final controversy at the hands of referee Phil Dowd who failed to send off Nemanja Vidic for a blatant professional foul on Gabby Agbonlahor and thus gifted Manchester United the upper hand in the club’s losing last visit to the national stadium six weeks ago.

There’s a complaint against an erroneous Chelsea penalty award – it was so bad that prime minister John Major, a staunch Stamford Bridge supporter, raised it in the House of Commons – which cost his Leicester City side a place in the quarter-finals in 1997.

There’s a disputed last-eight abandonment in 1974 when he was playing in a Nottingham Forest side coasting at Newcastle only for a pitch invasion to force the players off the field with Forest losing a second replay at a neutral venue when they should have had home advantage.

There’s what he regards as gratuitous grumbling after a half-hour spell in Villa’s most recent meeting with Chelsea prompted a 7-1 drubbing, signalled open season for his critics and, in his view, detracted from an otherwise impressive campaign.

There’s his frustration at being overlooked for the England manager’s job after apparently frightening the Football Association’s bigwigs in his interview with the sheer force of his personality and unbending desire to do the job on his terms and his terms only.

These just scratch the surface. The list goes on. And on. And on. Of course, O’Neill has a countless supply of impressive achievements and happy memories to draw on too, but nothing focuses the mind quite like fighting unfairness.

O’Neill will have no shortage of wrongs to right when he returns to the home of football to hold court in the dressing rooms beneath the imposing arch on Saturday.