Aston Villa In the Media: Dunne Not Afraid of Man City; Battle for Harewood

In the UK media this week, the top Aston Villa stories include Richard Dunne facing old club Manchester City in the Carling Cup final and the battle by several Premier League clubs for the signature of Marlon Harewood.

On Skysports , the top story in the Villa section is that defender Richard Dunne insists he would have no qualms about facing his former club Manchester City in the Carling Cup final .

He said, "The aim is to get to the final and, come the end of February, to be picking up the trophy. That is the main thing for me, whoever we play."

Meanwhile, considering everyone seems to love a bit of transfer news, Skysports have also run the story that clubs including Hull City and West Ham United are in the hunt for out of favour striker Marlon Harewood .

Harewood's agent, Phil Sproson, told the Hull Daily Mail , "I have spoken to both Phil [Brown, Hull City manager] and Gianfranco [Zola, West Ham United manager] and both said they were interested in Marlon [Harewood] if they can get the deals sorted at their clubs."

In UK national newspapers the Daily Express and the Daily Star , Ireland captain Dunne again hits the headlines, this time admitting manager Martin O'Neill is under more pressure at Aston Villa to get his signings right than Dunne's former club Manchester City.

However, this story comes from the Media Watch article on the Aston Villa official club website and seems untraceable in both of the aforementioned newspapers.

And in regional newspaper Birmingham Mail , O'Neill faces the tough task of picking up his troops from the mental exhaustion of their postponed Carling Cup semifinal against Blackburn Rovers .

That is according Villa's 1977 League Cup winning captain, Chris Nicholl, who said, "Players have to get themselves in the right frame of mind for a semifinal or a big game like that and mentally it can be quite an exhausting thing.

"And that's a big thing when a game is called off, you have a slump after coming down from a big high. All players go through that and it's something that’s hard to understand if you haven’t been there before.

"You have that comedown and that nervous energy definitely takes it out of you."