Aston Villa manager Martin O'Neill could not understand why Gabriel Agbonlahor was booked for diving as his side edged to a 1-0 victory at Blackburn Rovers in the first leg of their Carling Cup semi-final at Ewood Park.

James Milner grabbed the all-important goal but O'Neill was aggrieved that Agbonlahor was handed a yellow card by referee Mark Clattenburg after he appeared to have been felled by Chris Samba.

He raged:"It looks a penalty to me, the referee would have to make that decision.

"We've had an incident before where Ashley Young was upended against Arsenal, he ends up getting booked and misses the next match when he has been put into the air three times, falls almost on his head and the referee decides that's a dive.

"I'm getting just a bit annoyed about it, because that's two players here who referees have decided are cheating and I think that's grossly unfair, I'm not best pleased with it to be honest.

"I thought we played very well, we got a goal in front - a great goal - we could have had a couple of penalties.

"I thought their player handled the ball. It's a difficult one to judge, but if he (Clattenburg) thought it was one of us who'd handled the ball, he would have booked one of our players - and that didn't materialise.

"In the second half we knew Blackburn would come at us and they caused us a few problems, but we had two fantastic chances.

"It was a tough game and it's still undecided. We've got a bit of an advantage."Subscribe to Football FanCast News Headlines by Email