With many people expecting a massacre at Villa Park last night, it's certainly fair to say that the Aston Villa youngsters did themselves proud in their FA Cup tie against Liverpool last night.
They were level at the break and a 4-1 scoreline is nothing to be ashamed for a team that had an average age of just over 18-years old.
Of course, their task certainly wasn't made any easier by Liverpool's team selection. Jurgen Klopp put out a strong team, with only a few first choice players given the night off.
The German treated the tie as he would have had Villa's first team been available, an understandable stance when you consider that his team do not play again for over a week.
However, Tony Cascarino did not agree with this choice.
Speaking on talkSPORT, the former Ireland striker said that Klopp had done the wrong thing in selecting a strong team for the fixture.
To be honest, I was a bit disappointed Liverpool didn't go with an U23s team.
There will be many supporters around the country who would disagree with me on this, but I was wanting it to be on a level playing field.
I didn’t want Liverpool to have Champions League-winning players to go against a Villa team that was more like U18s, actually, than U23s.
I would have loved if Klopp had gone, ‘you know what, just because we’re Liverpool and we respect what’s happened at Villa Park, we’ll go with U23s too’.
I wanted that to happen. I get why they didn’t, because it’s a competition Klopp feels they can win so he went strong so he could win the game.
Listen, I might be wrong on this, because Villa players might have learned a lot from playing against a quality opposition with a lot of top players, and I’m sure they did.
That’s the standard they’re looking at, that’s what they’ve got to get to and it’s a massive gap between where they are in their careers at the top level, so I get that side of it. That was the one benefit for the Villa youngsters.
And every mum and dad that watched their son play on the telly would have been really proud of their performance. So I understand why Liverpool did it, I’m just not 100 per cent behind it.
Klopp has often been accused of disrespecting the FA Cup in the past, so it is interesting to see the opposite be said here.
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