Gareth Barry was disappointed that, despite another man of the match display again strongly hinting at an end to his three and half year exile from international duty, Villa missed out on a third win in four league games with Saturday's draw with Middlesbrough.

"We played some good stuff," said the Villa skipper. "Another day, we might have got three or four and been worth it. We actually played better than we did in our last home game against Blackburn when we won and yet this time we only came away with a point.

"We had a great chance just before they scored and they go down the other end and put the ball in back of the net. But this was a classic example of what happens when you don't take your chances."

Barry's former England Under-21 team-mate Malcolm Christie announced his latest return to action with his first goal for Middlesbrough in almost two years — and then admitted he would probably be watching it on Saturday night’s Match of the Day with the sound down.

The former Nuneaton Borough striker, who has undergone eight operations in four injury-ravaged years at the Riverside, was well aware that he was in an offside position when he received the ball for his first-half strike and that it should not have counted.

But he explained: "The wife will still want to watch it. But I don't think she understands the offside rule and, when she sees it on TV, I won't be explaining it to her. I'll probably just have to make a grab for the volume control when they start talking about it afterwards.

"I knew it was offside. You get an idea of these things and I had a look at the linesman to see if the flag would go up. Thankfully it didn't."

Although well aware of the lucky break their man had enjoyed, two former Villa players shared Christie's pleasure.

"If anybody deserves some luck after all he's been through it's Malcolm," said Boro manager Gareth Southgate, still Villa's captain when Christie first got his big break at Derby County in 1998.

Boro's captain George Boateng added: "He worked so hard he deserved his goal. I always knew he had the character to get back, but he's shown he still has a big future with the club."

Christie himself agreed that maybe he was owed one. "I've had a terrible run since I joined Middlesbrough, so maybe my luck was in today.

"I've had a broken leg, a stress fracture of the leg, a stress fracture of the foot, nerves taken out of the feet, a groin op and a tonsillectomy. Eight operations in four years. And there are times when I've been as low as a snake's belly.

"But I've got a fairly positive outlook on life. There's people worse off than myself. And I've had friends and family who picked me up after every disaster and a club who stuck by me at a time when the fans must have been thinking 'Who is this guy we've signed who's never fit and never plays."