O'Neill - We must recover

Aston Villa manager Martin O'Neill says his side must try and recover after their 7-1 humbling at Chelsea.

The Blues were rampant at Stamford Bridge and romped home thanks to four goals from Frank Lampard, a brace from Florent Malouda and an effort from Salomon Kalou.

The emphatic defeat is a big blow to Villa's quest to finish in the UEFA Champions League places, and they take on Chelsea in the FA Cup in a fortnight's time.

Asked how important it is to mentally recover, O'Neill told Sky Sports: "That's a difficult one but recover we will do. Recover we will have to do for a start because we've got the same opposition in the FA Cup semi-final.

"But we are capable of turning it round, I think the players have shown that this season.

"That was a devastating blow but nevertheless a lesson. The fact is that Chelsea are a very fine side, one of the best in Europe, that's regardless of whether the Champions League has not been won."

John Carew had equalised for the Claret and Blues in the first half, but Villa conceded five goals after the break and O'Neill admits they were well beaten.

Deserved defeat

"We were well beaten, well beaten by a very fine team," he added.

"We certainly didn't help ourselves at all and at half-time I don't think anybody would have seen that coming.

"But we allowed ourselves to go from the possibility of equalising the game 2-2 to go to 3-1, and for some obscure reason we just capitulated.

"We conceded ground, we conceded possession and conceded goals. Chelsea were rampant at the end."

Asked if the result was because of fatigue in the squad, O'Neill remarked: "This is the main part of the season, we've been going for a long time now, but that doesn't really matter.

"Before the game I know that we made a couple of changes in the side to freshen things up a little bit, but generally speaking the players were in fine fettle before."