McNulty puts Villa’s Benteke in his pocket as Hatters take step forward

Much-coveted multi-million pound striker Christian Benteke led the line for Villa, but was superbly marshalled by Town’s back four.

Still said: “We’ve worked hard in pre-season and I’ve been really pleased with it in all the games.

“To be honest I’m not particularly more pleased today than the others, they’re just steps forward and we knew today that we had to be showing organisation, and a discipline and a commitment and a team together effort and that’s what we did.

“I don’t think Tyles (Mark Tyler) had a tremendous amount of saves to make because we defended it very, very well.”

Experienced defender Steve McNulty was key to the clean sheet with a number of great blocks and relished the chance to go up against one of the Premier League’s hottest properties.

He said: “You can’t look so much into. Obviously it’s good experiencing yourself playing against these types of players, but he’s only reported back three days ago and I think if he had had a couple more weeks in his locker and a bit more sharpness it would have been a lot harder a night.

“You’ve just got to test yourself against these players really. We’ve did well as a team but it’s always nice to play against these players and test yourselves against them.

“He’s a world class player and he’s playing in the Premier League, as kids growing up that was our aspiration, that’s where our younger lads need to look up to them, that’s where they need to go.

“I’m too old to be looking that far ahead now, but that’s where you want to play, that’s how good you want to get to.

“It’s a different level, some balls you think they’re flying out of play, he’s just bringing them down with his leg and the ball goes into him.

“They’ve got great pace and you think you’re there and they just knock it past you, but he’s a world class player.”

Town triumphed on the night thanks to great goals from Jon Shaw in the first half and second half substitute Jake Howells who produced a deft finish to dink home the second late on.

Howells said: “I didn’t expect to play much as I’ve played quite a lot of minutes this season, so just to come on I was over the moon to play against Premier League opposition and to get a goal I couldn’t believe my luck when I got put through and got lucky and just put it away, really happy.

“I definitely wasn’t calm, but as soon as I hit it I thought I’ve got it in, but the keeper came out quite quickly and I thought I’m not going to score here but luckily enough it went in.”

And Still purred about both goals, adding: “That was a good finish, but the first goal - Mark Cullen’s a very, very clever player.

“I just played him off the centre forward today, he was bright, his movement’s clever and he worked his socks off just off of Jon as well.”