Hamburg 3 Aston Villa 1

ASTON Villa surrendered their unbeaten away record in Europe this season as a severely weakened side were no match for Hamburg strikers Ivica Olic and Mladen Petric in a UEFA Cup clash at the Nordbank Arena.

With qualification for the final 32 already assured, Villa manager Martin O’Neill included only three of the starting line-up from the 4-2 weekend win over Bolton in defenders Carlos Cuellar and Luke Young and midfielder Steve Sidwell.

Villa, who had Sidwell sent off in the closing stages, had to play second fiddle to Martin Jol’s side once Petric had opened the scoring to pave the way for a double blast from Olic before a late consolation from Nathan Delfouneso.

Five Villa players – Gabriel Agbonlahor, Ashley Young, Martin Laursen, Gareth Barry and James Milner – had not even made the trip to Germany, with O’Neill keeping one eye on the hectic festive programme ahead.

And the Villa bench included four reserve team players in Barry Bannan, Ciaran Clark, Christopher Herd and Shane Lowry.

O’Neill would have been wary of the threat Petric and Olic were likely to pose in their club’s final game before the winter break.

And the duo pulled the Villa centre-back pairing of Zat Knight and Cuellar, who looked particularly uncomfortable, all over the place with their movement and intelligent play.

After 18 minutes a deadly piece of finishing from Petric put Hamburg in front after they had dominated the early exchanges.

Piotr Trochowski played a 50-yard ball which picked out the run of Petric who had managed to stay onside.

His first touch took him clear of Zat Knight and the second saw him fire a leftfooted volley past the dive of Brad Guzan into the corner of the net.

After 28 minutes Olic doubled Hamburg’s lead.

Marcell Jansen supplied the ball out to Dennis Aogo on the left flank and his cross into the danger area saw Olic get in front of Cuellar and angle his header past Guzan via the inside of a post.

Cuellar was at fault when Villa fell further behind after 56 minutes to Olic’s second goal.

A 60-yard pass into the Villa half was misjudged by Cuellar, who looked favourite to win the ball, but Olic nipped it away from him and drilled a low shot past Guzan.