Villa could face FA wrath after Cup crowd chaos

Aston Villa will be braced for a Football Association investigation after their FA Cup triumph over West Bromwich Albion ended in alarming crowd scenes at the weekend.

Albion manager Tony Pulis criticised the stewarding at Villa Park after ugly scenes involving both sets of supporters of the local rivals disrupted the home side's 2-0 quarter-final win.

Albion fans threw seats on to the pitch and celebrating Villa fans caused a short interruption in play by invading the playing surface in the dying minutes.

They were desribed as "mindless idiots" by Pulis.

At the final whistle, a full-scale pitch invasion saw the players of both teams engulfed by fans in what Villa scorer and captain, Fabian Delph, described as "very, very scary" scenes.

He even said that, bizarrely, he had been bitten during the chaos.

The scenes, reminscent of some of the uncontrolled old days of English football in the 1980s, seem bound to prompt the wrath of the FA.

Pulis pointed a finger at Villa, saying the club should before the game have recognised potential problems which could endanger the players.

"It's disgraceful. We don't want to see those scenes. They've beaten us and, for that to happen, that's just mindless idiots," he said.

"I actually think Villa should look at the stewarding. It's a quarter-final of the FA Cup, a full house, you know it's going to be tasty. You should have stewards but the hierarchy at Villa should recognise the need for stewards at both ends of the pitch.

"It puts the players in danger and we don't want to see that. We were seeing it in the 1970s and 80s and we don't want to get back to that.

"I'm sure the FA will look at it without me poking my nose in too much."

Villa manager Tim Sherwood added: "I can't condone the fans entering the field, but I can understand their emotions, they've just beaten their local rivals twice in a week and once in the quarter-final of the FA Cup, so the emotions are running very, very high.