Talking Tayls with Ian Taylor

Villa favourite Ian Taylor believes the Champions League dream is pretty much gone again this season after failing to beat Everton on home soil.

It pains me to say it, but I think we can now kiss goodbye to those dreams of Champions League football next season.

Normally a draw against Everton wouldn't be a bad result, especially when you score a 91st-minute equaliser.

But last night's 2-2 draw just wasn't enough for Villa – it had to be a win to keep them hanging in there.

In all truth, finishing in the top four would have been a big ask for Martin O'Neill's side even if they had beaten the Toffees last night.

Manchester City are in prime position to take it. At times like this you look at the teams in form – and they are certainly just that.

Villa needed to dig out a result and that's exactly what Tottenham did last night in beating Arsenal. It's hard to look beyond those two for that final Champions League place now.

What will really frustrate Martin is the way Villa defended set-pieces. It's not like it's a big secret that Tim Cahill is a huge threat in the air, so for Villa to twice concede from headers just wasn't good enough.

Still, it was a rousing response to Saturday's FA Cup semi-final defeat to Chelsea – the lads gave it everything they've got.

A combination of misfortune, poor finishing and supreme goalkeeping from Tim Howard ultimately conspired against them but, overall, the result was probably the right one.

Everton played their part in the game and, let's face it, Phil Neville should have buried that chance at the death. Now that would have been a real choker.

As for the Champions League, you just hope Villa haven't missed their chance. These are the occasions where you must take fifth or sixth and build on it for next season to try to get fourth.

At the start of the season you would take getting to a Carling Cup final and an FA Cup semi-final – although looking back on it now you are a little disappointed to get so close and not make it.

That's because the players set the bar so high with the way they were performing at the beginning of the season.

Everyone was talking about Villa and how good they were but now you would rather be an Everton, coming up on the rails with no one talking about you.

Of course, with the pressure and high expectations, people will be disappointed but on the back of this season a lot of players who could come to Villa will be looking at the club.

Hopefully we can sign some really good players in the summer and put ourselves on a bigger stage.

They will need to be strong for the rest of the season after more Wembley heartbreak, where referee Howard Webb made some controversial decisions which didn't go our way.

Saturday's cup semi-final was a hard-luck story where the whole football world could see they should have had a penalty. That could have been a game changing moment and to go on to lose by as many as we did was a big disappointment.

John Terry's tackle on James Milner also caused a lot of debate. I was there on the day and, at the time, I didn't think it was bad.

But when you see it afterwards you see how bad it was. I sympathise with the referee a little, because he's got two linesmen and a fourth official but it's the ref who gets the rap all the time. He's got other officials to help him who get away with it scot free.

There aren't enough top class referees out there or enough people who want to become referees so they can't afford to suspended them every week if they make a mistake, you'd have no officials!

It's a tough job and I can sympathise with the fact they don't want to introduce technolog,y because if they do it in the Premier League they have to do it all the way through and have they got the facility to do that?

Crisis club Portsmouth come to Villa on Sunday after reaching the FA Cup final last weekend.

Getting there could give them a Europa League place with Chelsea in the Champions League, but they must satisfy UEFA's financial regulations to be considered for it.

For me, they should be in Europe because on the pitch they've done the business. Getting there is about playing football and being good enough so they have done that.

You've got to hand it to the players, they've gone out there and tried hard. I know they've been relegated but they've done their best and it's the players who are being punished unjustly.

I really feel sorry for Pompey, because all business sense goes out the window in football. I don't understand how a football club can get into that position. You shouldn't need those examples to make people run football clubs properly.

Football has a lot to answer for, the gap between the Premier League and Championship is becoming bigger by the year and promoted teams need to spend or they'll come down.

It almost benefits clubs to be a yo-yo team. It's a tough one for guys who run them.

Finally, talking of yo-yo clubs, congratulations to Albion on their promotion. They've done amazingly well, they could be the classic yo-yo team but let's hope they can stay in the Premier League.

We have got four Midlands teams in the top flight now and it's great for the area.