Aston Villa all but assured their qualification for the group stages of Uefa Cup tournament after a solid performance and a resounding win against Litex Lovech in Bulgaria, 3-1 in the first leg on September 18 2008. It will take something short of divine intervention for Litex to qualify, but Litex coach Stanimir Stoilov has different ideas for the second leg game on October 2 in the UK.

"We are going to England to beat them," he told Bulgarian-language daily Meridian Match. "Aston Villa are all but guaranteed to go through, but everything is possible in football. They could rest all their key players and make a rotation due to the solid advantage they have over us. We can’t however afford to be complacent as three of our key players are suspended and our only option is to go on the attack.”

In translation Stoilov probably means: "I hope that Villa will drop most of their keys players because I don’t have my key players and I am asking Villa to be polite enough and take us for granted".

Stoilov said that French striker Wilfred Niflor is recuperating fast and is most likely to participate at Villa Park. Stoilov went on to say that the defeat at the hands of Levski Sofia on September 27 was because of  "team apathy" and that the entire team collectively refused to put a decent effort into the game. The touring party features 17-year-old Alexandar Tsvetkov who has had only one official match with the team until now. If he plays, he is likely to be deployed as full back or right back.

Meanwhile, Martin O'Neil is going to give youngster James Milner his start with Villa. We can expect more changes in the starting eleven as well, as O'Neil said on the Aston Villa website that "Several of the players who played against Sunderland will be rested”.

"Lovech are a very fine side, they caused us plenty of problems, and the turning point in the match was when they failed to go 2-0 up and we took matters into our own hands. I have been in football long enough to know that this tie is not over," O'Neil added.

The Aston Villa vs Litex game will be shown live by private Bulgarian TV2 channel at 10pm right after the Levski vs Zhilina (Slovakia) game that starts on 7pm in Bulgaria.

The first game on September 18 ended in a 1-1 draw, which gives Levski a good chance for advancing to the group stage of the tournament.

The third Bulgarian team in the tournament, Cherno More Varna, is playing VfB Stuttgart in Germany. Bulgarians have little to hope for after loosing the first leg game 1-2 at home.

Levski missed the chance to enter the group stages of Uefa Champions League after losing to this year's surprise BATE Borisov from Belarus.