Agbonlahor backed to claim England ticket to SAfrica

Martin O’Neill has backed on-form striker Gabriel Agbonlahor to shoot himself into Fabio Capello’s England squad for the World Cup finals in South Africa next year.

The Villa forward is currently on the fringes of his national team and missed out on the squads for the recent matches against Slovenia and Croatia.

But his goal in Saturday’s 2-0 win over Portsmouth made it three in his last three matches and O’Neill believes Capello will have taken notice of the way his striker, who has been working on his upper body strength, shook off Pompey defender Tal Ben-Haim to score Villa’s second just before half-time.

“He conjured something from nothing and that gave us a massive lift,” O’Neill said. “He is playing brilliantly for us at the moment and it was a fantastic goal.

“South Africa is a long way off but if he can continue that sort of form he will be hard to ignore.”

The build-up to the match had been dominated by O’Neill’s decision to drop Nigel Reo-Coker after a training ground spat but the Northern Irishman was determined to concentrate on what is now a four-match winning run for his side.

“The fuss had nothing to do with today,” he said. “We got a bit of momentum going before today and it was important to keep that going. We looked a bit tired which is inexplicable but we won the game and know we can play much better.”

It was Portsmouth’s sixth successive defeat and manager Paul Hart acknowledged more would follow if his side did not improve their defending.

“I thought we played well in the first half and they did not give us many problems. But you are distraught if you give away two goals that you would be distraught about if you were an 11-year-old.

“That gave us a mountain to climb but overall we played extremely well. They were two errors that in terms of Premier League football I can’t quite understand. I have got great belief in my players and I do think we will turn things around.”

James Milner had given Villa the lead with the England winger converting a spot-kick after Stiliyan Petrov was felled in the area by Nadir Belhadj.

Agbonlahor then sealed the points with a superb strike from just outside the area.