Aston Villa v Bradford City: Paul Lambert accuses Capital One Cup rivals of disrespect over Wembley taunt
Paul Lambert has accused Bradford City’s stadium announcer of disrespecting Aston Villa by urging supporters to “book their hotel rooms for London” in the wake of their Capital One Cup semi-final first-leg win.
Lambert is urging his struggling side to erase the memories of their lowest ebb this season by using the comments, made by the Rev Paul Deo moments after the final whistle at Valley Parade, as inspiration as they seek to overturn their 3-1 deficit in tonight’s second leg.
Bradford, whose players trained at the Football Association’s St George’s Park yesterday, will go into the sell-out tie backed by 6,500 travelling fans but Lambert is determined to revive the season by guiding Aston Villa to their third visit to the national stadium in three years.
That chastening experience in the first leg will form the basis of Lambert’s team-talk while the post-match comments of Mr Deo are also certain to be mentioned as Villa attempt to clinch a place in the final.
He said: “It’s disrespectful of the guy to do that and football has got a great habit of kicking you somewhere. Maybe you can understand him getting carried away because it was their big moment but we’ll see what happens after the game.
“I won’t need to do much of a team talk, they know already because the first leg was our lowest point of the season. Chelsea was really low obviously because of the beating [Villa lost 8-0], but I think because of what happened and who we were playing – and that’s no disrespect to Bradford – that was really, really low.