Barry's England's only Villa winner

Ashley Young was a little more than that, but with the emphasis on the word 'little'. Two minutes of normal time to go, and three minutes of stoppage time saw him clear from inside his own box and later run once with the ball but fail to beat the full-back and then fail to beat the Swiss defender on the near post from the corner.

No, the night- in terms of Villa relevance- most definitely belonged to Barry who simply does not look out of place on the big stage, albeit a friendly against an average team.

It could be very, very different for Villa when England travel to France next month. Barry should make the squad but may not make the team if Frank Lampard returns, Carson could disappear altogether.

Young has a chance of the squad, but in open play has hardly been in good form for Villa of late. His game has been saved by his exquisite dead-ball delivery.

Agbonlahor I have high hopes for. He should make the squad and deserves to on the back of 18 months of consistently good form.

All of this brings me to a little PR idea we had at the Mail last week.

It had been a disasterous few days for Villa off the pitch. They had lost Chief Executive Richard Fitzgerald, generally regarded in high esteeem by the fans.

They had lost promising defender Gary Cahill to Bolton, although for most of last week it looked like it would be Blues, and that would have been too hard to swallow. They had failed to get a work permit for Brad Guzan. They had failed to add to the capture of Wayne Routledge as the clock ticked down.

And yet Fabio Capello had handed the club a lifeline... a magnificent and totally unexpected lifeline by calling up five players.

"Can we bring a big England flag up to the training ground and drape the players around it for a photo?", we asked.

"No, because Ashley Young won't be there", came the disinterested reply of media boss Phil Mepham, who for some reason had accompanied Martin O'Neill to London for Guzan's hearing.

"Can we photo the other four then?"

"No because Curtis Davies wants to play everything down", came a baffling response.

Davies, 24 hours later and still in the squad, was still revelling in the spotlight as he spoke for ten minutes to us in the morning and half-an-hour to the national papers, radios and TV's later that day.

So in the end there was no picture. There was no five Villa players covered in England glory. And the supporters continued to rant and rile at the lack of activity in the transfer window.

We can only lead a horse to water, as they say....