Not for the first time this year Tony McAndrew has spoken of his immense pride after seeing Villa's Young Lions lift the Angels Cup in Ergenzingen.

Villa's youngsters, who ended the season as Premier Academy League national champions, beat opposition from Croatia, Germany, Brazil and Switzerland to lift the trophy.

McAndrew's men was also named 'Attacking Side of the Tournament' while reserves regular Barry Bannan was 'Player of the Tournament'.

The Villa coach told www.avfc.co.uk: "The lads did very well. It's been a long hard season and they've performed fantastically.

"The temptation would have been to take the foot off the pedal but to their tremendous credit they kept the same attitude and the same quality to deservedly win the tournament.

"We said before we went that everybody would play at least one game and we'd try to get everybody the same amount of game time.

"We managed to do that and even managed to get a 15-year-old on the pitch which was fantastic. We gave everybody an experience of playing European football."

Villa drew 1-1 with Hajduk Split in the opening game before comfortably beating hosts Ergenzingen 4-0 and rounding off the group stage with a 2-0 victory against Brazilian outfit Sao Paulo.

McAndrew continued: "We played AFC Thun - a very good side - in the semi-final. They gave us a bit of a lesson in keeping the ball in the first-half. It was a tight game and looked as though it was going to go to penalties.

"Then Harry Forrester popped up with an absolutely superb free-kick from about 25 yards into the top corner to give us a 1-0 win.

"The final was against Mainz 05 from Germany. They were a good side but we really played well and again young Harry scored a great goal for another 1-0 win. I think we deservedly won the tournament."

After seeing his side lauded for their attacking play, McAndrew concluded: "That's nice but it felt as though they were giving trophies for everything! We'll take it though.

"We did try and attack and the disappointing thing about the tournament is that there were four or five teams who came with no intention of trying to win games - they were more intent on not losing games.

"That's a bit disappointing. I think when you go to these tournaments you try to play and go to win. I think anybody watching the tournament would see that we wanted to win every game. We scored nine goals and conceded one, so that tells its own story."

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