Good news, everybody! We're not playing Blackburn in the 3rd round of the Carling Cup! Instead, sometime in the week of September 19th, Aston Villa will take on Bolton Wanderers (who have a fine new blog!) at Villa Park. As much as we all hate playing Blackburn, I think drawing them would have been better. Bolton are a team that Aston Villa should beat, but they will certainly put up more of a challenge than Blackburn did this past weekend. In the opening weekend of EPL play, the Wanderers crushed QPR in London by a score of 4-0. Last week, they performed better than anyone expected and gave Manchester City a scare while only losing 2-3. They're a cagey team, if nothing else. We'll obviously have more analysis of this matchup as it gets closer and as we find out more about Bolton this season than two games can tell us.

Elsewhere, those of you who love Birmingham schadenfreude will enjoy seeing their chances at a cup defense die miserably. They've drawn Manchester City at Ethiad Stadium. Our constant nemesis, the Rovers, have drawn either Leyton Orient or the Bristol Rovers. I hope it's the latter so we can have Rovers/Rovers as a matchup. Though it's a shame we drew Bolton and thus killed a Rovers/Wanderers match. So much traveling!

You can find the full draw results here. I'm not sure if these are as copyright protected as the EPL schedule/table, so you'll just have to click.

All right, Aston Villa fans -- how many of you know much about League 2 side Hereford United? What I know: they drew with AFC Wimbledon last weekend and they're called the Bulls. Oh, and Villa play them on Tuesday in the Carling Cup. Therefore, I got someone a bit smarter than me to give me the details. Thanks, Gary Andrews!

Hereford are very much a yo-yo club between non-league and the Football League. They've largely been a non-league team - they were elected to the league in 1976 and were relegated in 1997. They won the Conference playoff final in 2006 and went up to League One in 2008 but were relegated again the following season. Since then they've struggled, largely because their 2008 squad was build on loan players and they don't have much cash to attract new ones. 

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Will it be Blackurn Rovers? Please, please, please, God, tell me it's not Blackburn Rovers. We managed to accomplish not getting Rapid Vienna by simply not qualifying for Europa, but it's impossible not to qualify for the League Cup, so it seems inevitable it's going to be Blackburn. Of course, we may never find out if Sheffield Wednesday or Blackpool never score a bloody goal. How did that not go in?!?

Oh, thank goodness that's over. Bring on the draw. And it's...

Hereford United. That'd be the club that finished 21st in League 2 last season.And we play them at home. On August 23rd, by the way.

If Aston Villa can't manage to make it to the third round, we might all need to give up for good. Except apparently Hereford are a good League side.

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You guys think I'm really going to write an analysis about how Obafemi Martins gave Birmingham City a winner in the Carling Cup final? You think we're going to dwell on how the Bluenoses are going to Europe (probably)? Absolutely not. Instead, you lot are going to show just how painful it was to be an Aston Villa fan (or a sympathizer) during Arsenal's loss.

Special thanks go to:

@richard_franks          @alfiescott123          @JamieCutteridge          @twofootedtackle          @rickyshitpants

@Yallop23          @avfccentral          @aaroncampeau          @camsev          @Lizzlsperger92

@7500_Robert          @NotAshleyYoung          @AVFCElizabeth          @RYallop4          @AronGamble

@MRiemen          @RWhittall          @Son_of_Sam          @jonawils          @slakyfoot          @ohitmustbe

Warning: Language below the jump may be unsuitable for children under 13

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Aston Villa travel just a few kilometers today to face Birmingham City at St. Andrews in the quarter-finals of the League Cup. Both teams have given supporters a few heart attacks on the way to the quarter finals. Small Heath has faced decidedly inferior competition, starting off with League One side Rochdale, who scored twice, before facing another League One side, Milton Keynes, and then requiring a penalty shootout against yet another League One side, Brentford.

The Villa, for their part, have been slightly less embarrassing in defending their runner-up-ship (is that a thing?) in the Carling Cup. Although they allowed Blackburn Rovers to score first, Villa once again swept aside their ever-present Cup foes. Aston Villa then faced their look-alikes in Championship side Burnley and had a bit more trouble, allowing the Clarets to come back in the 89th minute. Although Burnley may have forced added extra time, the Villa certainly didn't require a penalty shootout.

The claret and blue side of Birmingham may have had a superior showing in the League Cup so far, but unless they win tonight, those results will be worth less than nothing.

Preview

Aston Villa Starting XI: Friedel; Warnock, Dunne, Collins,  L. Young; Downing, Clark, Bannan, Hogg, A. Young; Agbonlahor.

AVFC Bench: Guzan, Pires, Ireland, Carew, Delfouneso, Cuellar, Lichaj.

Small Heath Alliance Starting XI: Foster; Ridgewell, Johnson, Dann, Carr; Fahey, Bowyer, Ferguson, Larsson; Zigic, Jerome.

SHA Bench: Taylor, Gardner, Derbyshire, Michel, Beausejour, Jiranek, Murphy.

Let the hatred continue, girls and boys, for Aston Villa have drawn Birmingham City for the quarter-finals of the League Cup. And guess what? It's at Saint Andrews. This sounds like a lot of not-fun in Birmingham. In positive news, even though Aston Villa had a slight issue with moving past Burnley, Birmingham needed a penalty shootout to make it past Brentford. Allow me to remind you: the Bees are in League One. Of course, now they're probably going to get angry about being mocked and take it out on us on Sunday...

Of course, Manchester United drew West Ham for the next round, even if they do have to travel to Upton Park, whereas the poor Wigan Athletic have to make a trip to the Emirates to visit an Arsenal side that is absolutely desperate for trophies. Maybe it's best if the Villa just bow out gracefully. Oh, and Ipswich Town welcomes West Brom, so it could have been much worse for the one remaining Championship side.

Aston Villa decided to put every one of its supporters on a roller coaster ride of doom today, needing 120 minutes at Villa Park to see off Championship side Burnley, 2-1. The Villa faithful went from quietly confident to fretfully nervous to gleefully ecstatic to exceedingly frustrated back to gleefully ecstatic to pure anger. In the end, the team and the fans were happy, but at the expense of the health of many.

I'm not going to pretend that I was able to watch the match, as there was no way to find a live stream. But between live text updates, Twitter messages and 7500's commentary, the general picture of the match can be painted. Using a 4-6-0 or 4-1-5 (doesn't really matter how you slice it, Villa didn't have a traditional striker on the pitch) the home side went on the attack early, and once again created chance after chance. Now if the team could just learn to actually get the ball in the net, that would be a positive.

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Burnley travel to Villa Park for the fourth round of the League Cup. This fixture is one that Aston Villa, by virtue of being in a higher division, should easily win. So why the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach?

Should Villa wish to advance to the semi-finals of the cup and once again challenge for hardware, they need to do something they haven't done since the sixteenth minute of the Spurs match: score a goal. Ok, that's not quite true. Richard Dunne scored a goal last Saturday, but the problem there is that the goal was counted for Sunderland. So we'll amend that statement: Villa need to score a goal by putting the ball into the opposition's net. Or, I suppose, getting the opposition to flub it and put the ball in their own net. At this point, either way works for me.

Aaron and I discussed the fact that he'd rather see the team lose 4-3 than 1-0. Could we see that today?

Aston Villa Starting XI:Friedel; Lichaj, Cuellar, Clark; Beye; Sidwell, Albrighton, Reo-Coker, Bannan; Ireland, Young, Carew

Reserves:Guzan, Downing, Johnson, Collins, Hogg, Delfouneso, Heskey

Burnley Starting XI:Grant, Mears, Carlisle, Duff, Fox, Alexander, Rodriguez, Marney, Cork, Wallace, Paterson.

Reserves: Jensen, Iwelumo, Elliott, Edgar, Bikey, Easton, Thompson