Recently by Mat Kendrick

Here's a little clip to cheer up Villa fans after former Bluenose David Dunn wrecked their team's six-game winning streak with his late penalty for Blackburn. Even Dunn himself admitted that Saturday's last gasp winner made up for this shameful show-boating in the Second City derby.

REGARDLESS of what he says about that incident on the Bodymoor Heath training pitches on Thursday, all the evidence suggests that Martin O'Neill was guilty of grappling.

Not necessarily with Nigel Reo-Coker, because if the Aston Villa boss maintains that the angry "contretemps" with the midfielder was verbal rather than violent then I daren't argue, especially after his revelation that he once tried to chin former Nottingham Forest team-mate Sammy Chapman in a training ground scuffle, albeit more than 20 years ago.

No, it seems O'Neill was guilty of grappling with his past.

For his handling of Reo-Coker throughout their time at Villa bears many hallmarks of his own struggles with the boss during his playing days at Forest.

O'Neill regularly remarks upon his relationship with Brian Clough during the City Ground glory years and how he always perceived himself to be the legendary manager's scapegoat.

Even now the Irishman will look back and complain about being shunted out to the fringes while Clough's Forest favourites, like O'Neill's current assistant John Robertson, could do no wrong.

O'Neill still talks about being forced to play right wing when personally he felt he was much more effective in central midfield. He still remembers the occasions he was dropped or subbed by Clough when he was convinced he should have started and finished every game.

He still bangs on, to anybody who will listen, about feeling victimised, expendable, replaceable.

Listen to O'Neill whinge about his persecution at the hands of Clough and it's almost as if it happened yesterday rather than during the late seventies and early eighties.

But, nowadays his gripes are voiced with a glint in the eye and with his typical self-deprecating wit because, with the benefit of hindsight, O'Neill recognises that his old manager was right all along.

ONCE again it took a free Brummie to settle the showdown between certainly the Second City's most expensively assembled team and arguably its most expensively assembled crowd.

In the build-up to the derby, Blues boss Alex McLeish attempted to swing the pendulum of pressure in Villa's direction by insisting that his big-spending rivals were the favourites to win this clash.

And, shrugging off the mind games, his Villa counterpart Martin O'Neill chose instead to have a dig at Birmingham's prohibitive prices with St Andrew's tickets for away fans costing almost £50.

But ultimately, after Brum's fierce rivals looked like matching each other pound for pound, it was one of the few players on the pitch who cost nothing and one of the few locals who paid nothing to get in who grabbed the glory. Gabby Agbonlahor.

And not only was Agbonlahor free, after coming through the claret and blue ranks, he was also left completely free to head the decider in the same Railway End net as his dramatic winner almost two years ago.

Suddenly 50 quid seemed like a bit of a bargain for the 3,000 delirious Villa visitors behind the goal.

Talk about smash and Gab.

A Jon McCarthy lookalike Bluenose and a rippling hulk of a Villa supporter commentate on the Second City derby for Sky's Fanzone.

IT'S a shame that Villa's most famous fake fan Tom Hanks is even less likely than fellow American General Krulak to take a seat at St Andrew's today.

(No, it's not because the multi-millionaire Hollywood A-list actor has been priced out of affording a ticket).

Hanks could do with attending a match like this afternoon's to boost his crumbling claret and blue credibility and familiarise himself with the club he light-heartedly professes to love.

But more importantly the world famous movie star could pass on a cautionary tale to one of Villa's 'Big' players, former Bluenose Emile Heskey, to be careful what you wish for.

For the film in which Hanks made his name, 'Big', has parallels with the situation current claret and blue scapegoat Heskey finds himself in ahead of today's return to St Andrew's.