Graphic: Over here and overplayed?

It was as a young manager in a hurry, eager to lift Wycombe Wanderers out of the Football Conference, that Martin O’Neill wryly decried the prospect of his youth-team players enhancing the club’s fortunes. “I’ll be dead by the time they’re old enough to do anything for me,” he quipped.

Fast-forward a generation and, 13 months into his redevelopment of Aston Villa, O’Neill is investing a burgeoning faith, as well as his chairman’s millions, in youth. Just as the FA and the Premier League are going to war over the development of domestic talent, a young and hungry all-English midfield has lit the spark for Villa’s thrilling renaissance.

The dynamism of Ashley Young, at 22 the freshest face in this week’s England squad, and Gabriel Agbonlahor, 20, unhinged Chelsea at Villa Park on Sunday, when O’Neill went for broke and asked Gareth Barry, 26, and Nigel Reo-Coker, 23, to outfox José Mourinho’s midfield three.

It worked. And while one victory does not make a season, O’Neill, having made Zat Knight and Curtis Davies his latest big-money signings, is unintentionally offering a template of how to take on the foreign invasion. Accepting that you have to buy big to challenge the upper end of the Barclays Premier League, O’Neill is also nurturing the likes of Luke Moore, Craig Gardner, Gary Cahill and Isaiah Osbourne with an eye on the longer term. Young Englishmen all. Scott Carson, on loan from Liverpool, underlines the emerging trend at Villa Park.

“This is the Barclays English Premier League,” O’Neill said. “We’ve got a lot of young lads who know each other and, more importantly, have very decent talent. If there were good-quality players from abroad available, I wouldn’t have a major problem with that, but I am happy to have an English core for the English Premiership. The idea at the football club is that these players could gel together and, because of the age they’re at, eventually peak together.”

Young and Reo-Coker, reared at Watford and Wimbledon respectively, have cost more than £8 million each this year; Agbonlahor, the local lad who was top scorer last season, and Barry, ten years since he joined Villa’s youth scheme from Brighton & Hove Albion’s, are home-grown. Reo-Coker captained the England Under21 team that reached the semi-finals of the European Championship and combines a ball-winning lust with lung-bursting athleticism. Agbonlahor, having missed the summer’s opportunity in the Netherlands, has been welcomed back into the Under-21 squad.

And is there really a more complete midfield player available to Steve McClaren this weekend, at a time when David Beckham, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and Owen Hargreaves are variously afflicted, than Barry? He combines graft and craft in equal measure, can score a goal and offers the left-footed and defensive balance that would release Gerrard.

Agbonlahor, having scored against Chelsea, hopes that the England head coach will be a regular visitor to Villa Park. “It’s well-deserved for Ashley getting into the squad,” he said. “It will be good if Steve McClaren now comes here a lot. We can all use Ashley’s development and the progress he has made to push on and challenge for international places.”

Everyone needs encouragement – not least Sir Trevor Brooking. Amid the clubs’ bleating over the apparent failure of the academy system, the FA’s director of football development has criticised Premier League and Football League clubs for refusing to accept the governing body’s help in youth development.

Brooking wants the FA to be given the power to monitor the entire youth development programme and yesterday Stuart Pearce, the Under21 coach, called for a quota system to be introduced. “In an ideal world, I’d like to say there are three players at each Premier League club at any one time that I can go and watch,” he said.

At least Villa, in the meantime, are offering England a potential team.

The future is claret

Aston England (possible; 4-4-2): S Carson – C Gardner, G Cahill, C Davies, Z Knight – G Agbonlahor, N Reo-Coker, G Barry, A Young – L Moore, M Harewood.

Production lines

Five other iconic British groupings that have provided successful teams with their backbone

Arsenal (back line, early 1990s): L Dixon, T Adams, S Bould, N Winterburn

Everton (Holy Trinity, 1970 title-winning midfield): A Ball, H Kendall, C Harvey

Leeds United (reviled and revered in equal measure, early 1970s): P Lorimer, B Bremner, J Giles, E Gray

Nottingham Forest (Brian Clough’s double European Cup winners): M O’Neill, J McGovern, I Bowyer, J Robertson

Aston Villa (grizzled old-timer and golden boy): G Shaw, P Withe