ALEX McLeish stood by his decision to play Alan Hutton as a right winger after conceding that Villa and Spurs’ differing aspirations are a “fact of life”.

McLeish felt employing Hutton in midfield and selecting Carlos Cuellar at full-back to double up on wing wonder Gareth Bale was the correct course of action.

But Villa’s boss admitted the Scottish defender was not the “ideal man” for the role after Bale still managed to set up both of Emmanuel Adebayor’s goals.

“I just wanted to tighten things up a wee bit,” said McLeish. “I still think that was the right thing to do, but when you lose goals the way we lose goals then it doesn’t give you much of a chance anyway.

“I’ve been playing four forwards the whole season and I took one out.

“Maybe Alan wasn’t exactly the ideal man there because he’s more of a defender coming onto the ball as opposed to being ahead of it.

“But we thought that he could cope and that him and Carlos could thwart the two attacking left sided Spurs players. I didn’t think Hutton did too badly and Carlos, in fact, did quite well.”