There has been a familiar echo in the air before Aston Villa's return trip to Stamford Bridge in the Carling Cup tonight - Chelsea moaning about referees.

Unusually, for once it has not been Jose Mourinho leading those moans.

Instead, Chelsea's England left-back Ashley Cole has stirred things up a treat by claiming that simply having Graham Poll in charge of two of their Premiership matches this season has cost them five points - Sunday's 2-1 defeat at White Hart Lane and the 1-1 draw they shared with Villa when tonight's cup opponents also met in the league just over a month ago.

England skipper John Terry, sent off by Poll on Sunday supposedly just to teach him a lesson, has also offered his two penn'orth.

Given the dark, brooding presence of Mourinho patrolling the touchline like a latterday Professor Van Helsing in pursuit of errant vampires, it would be little wonder if tonight's man in black, Mark Halsey, was too scared to leave his dressing-room.

Despite another couple of days of hysteria by a national media obsessed with Chelsea and Arsenal, Villa manager Martin O'Neill is more concerned with a cup tie he'd rather like to win - especially with his great record in this competition and his desire to get one over on Mourinho, whose Porto side so cheated

O'Neill's Celtic to win the 2003 Uefa Cup final.

O'Neill's chief pre-match stance is a general defence of referees, but essentially what he wants most tonight is the sort of strong official unlikely to be swayed by what has been seen and heard this week.

"The ref shouldn't be put under that sort of pressure," O'Neill said. "But, with all the outbursts, he probably is.

"I'm not here to doubt the integrity of referrees. That hasn't entered my head but the last thing you'd want is pressure put on refs to redress the balance and I'd hope he'll be able to deal with decisions as honestly as he possibly could."

O'Neill has sympathy for referees at the top level in modern-day football, saying: "The emphasis has shifted and Chelsea have now become the Man United, but it's not just the games involving the big clubs.

"There's a lot at stake in lots of games and the referee's job is now more difficult than ever. We've got the advantage of 19 different camera angles, with the chance to view decisions at leisure a couple of hours later.

"That doesn't mean you won't moan about something quite blatant but the complaining afterwards is mostly getting it off your chest, because you cannot change the result. A bit of an outburst is kind of under-standable if you don't know why one of your players has been sent off but, while generally you have sympathy, they do also have a responsibility to come out and say why they made certain decisions.

"If it doesn't tally with television evidence and they've made an honest assessment at the time and they can say 'This is why I did this' and 'That is what I thought had happened', then they should explain some of the decisions. There's no reason why not but, while I'm here taking the ref's side, I'll be the first to complain when I think they've got something wrong."

O'Neill says he had more to moan about than Chelsea in the 1-1 Premiership draw in London only five-and-a-half weeks ago and adds: "Chelsea have said something about Graham Poll reffing two of their games and that they've dropped five points because of him. But let me make it quite clear he was not the reason why they dropped two points against us. Absolutely not. You could go the other way and say he was quite lenient to Claude Makelele when he fouled Juan Pablo Angel with about ten minutes to go and didn't send him off. With 11 against ten, that might have been a defining moment."

Now, roared on by 6,000 fans heading south down the M1 on the 'Villa flotilla' of 90 coaches paid for by chairman Randy Lerner, O'Neill's men have the chance to go one step better.

Chelsea old boy Chris Sutton may get only as far as the bench, after a strenuous full debut against Blackburn Rovers, another of his former clubs, last Sunday. O'Neill could pick an extra midfielder in Steven Davis or reinforce his defence by finding a crafty way round picking a fully-fit Martin Laursen or bug-free Liam Ridgewell.

"Asking 'Sutty' to maybe play three games in six days might be a lot," he said. "I'm not sure he's fully recovered but Laursen feels he's capable of doing that and wants to be considered for selection, Ridgewell's back too, he's OK, Gavin McCann's fine and we're going to go there convinced we can get a result."