Martin O'Neill admits Aston Villa have reached "crunch time" in their season and most avoid poor results if they are to qualify for Europe.Villa go into Wednesday night's home Premier League clash with Middlesbrough eight points adrift of fourth and fifth placed Liverpool and Everton.

Tottenham's Carling Cup success and the failure of any of the 'big four' to reach the FA Cup semi-finals means Villa will now have to finish in the top five to qualify for Europe.

O'Neill has always maintained Liverpool were strong favourites to claim the fourth Champions League spot despite their off-the-field turmoil.

But he knows his side must repeat the kind of form they showed in the final part of last season - they were unbeaten in the last nine games - if they are to avoid having to take part in the Intertoto Cup.

O'Neill said: "Because of the FA Cup shocks there is only one UEFA Cup place available via the league. But those are the rules and I think you know them before you set out. I have no complaints about them.

"It is not disappointing. It is the rules. What it does mean is you have to try and focus now. We are not out of the race. The first thing is we have to try and win tomorrow night.

"It is the game in hand. We have not got to try and win it, we have got to win it, simple as that.

"It's a massive week. We've got two games in three days and I think it's a very important time for us.

"It's always an important time in fairness - but it's magnified now because we don't have the time or the games to put it right if things goes wrong.

"If it happened in mid-season you'd just move onto the next game with still plenty of time to put things right. Now it's real crunch time.

"We've got 10 games left, we're eight points off fifth place and we need to win most of them and a repeat of how we finished off last season would be very nice.

"We play Portsmouth at the weekend and then we're down to the last eight games and there is less room for error. We've got work to do to stay in contention.

"If we didn't make Europe, I would hope there would be disappointment around the place despite the fact we have made reasonable progress. But let's not talk about that. Let's really go for it now."

O'Neill has mixed feelings about Villa having to play catch-up with their fixtures after the game with Boro was put back from the weekend because of Gareth Southgate's side being involved in the FA Cup.

He said: "Psychologically, it can be better if you're not playing catch-up but at the same time I don't think we can worry too much about what's happening elsewhere.

"The one issue is that after a break we've now got two games in three days but then I suppose we should be fresher than Middlesbrough, who were involved in the FA Cup on Sunday.

"Middlesbrough didn't perform so well in their cup game. They will be disappointed with that and they know they need a certain number of points to be absolutely safe.

"But they've got the capabilities of doing that and they will be wanting to put that performance against Cardiff behind them."

Central defender Zat Knight will return to the side in place of Curtis Davies, whose ruptured Achilles will rule him out until October.

But O'Neill is confident the former Fulham player will be up to the task in the final two months of the campaign.

He said: "My own view is Zat is well up to it. He was unlucky not to be in the side before now. He has never moaned or complained and just got on with his work.

"He said when his chance came again, he was prepared to take it. I've been really impressed with him, as impressed with him when out of the team as I was when

More Football News from TEAMtalk