Aston Villa v Bradford City: live Aston Villa 1-0 Bradford (agg 2-3) (Benteke) Benteke! With his foot! McArdle just caught a fraction out of position, Bennett swung the diagonal cross in from the left, and Benteke could steal in at the near post to bunt the ball past Duke! Villa right back in this tie! 22 min Ciaran Clark is booked for a challenge on Hanson. Didn't look to be too much wrong with that. Clark even managed to nick the ball without going to ground. This picture isn't that tackle, but it is of Clark. 20 min Duke smothers a low shot from Agbonlahor after a knock-down from Benteke and a short pass from N'Zogbia. 19 min Bradford, to their credit, don't look flustered. The entire minute is filled with applause for Stiliyan Petrov, whose fight against cancer goes on. 18 min Darby smears Agbonlahor from behind. That's a downright awful challenge, and somehow it's not even a foul. The crowd are incensed, which might well help Villa in the long run. They're building up a head of steam. 16 min Delph lets one rip from 25 yards! That's only just over the bar, you know. A surging, enterprising run from Delph, and already Bradford look well short in midfield. 15 min Benteke from 10 yards! Good chance! Straight at Duke! Villa could quite easily have had a goal by now, but you sense it's coming. 13 min Vlaar steps into the Bradford half and plays it out to Lowton... ugh, Ron Vlaar, what was that? Miles in front of the player. Lowton wouldn't have got that ball if he'd been a car. 11 min Hanson gets ahead on it, but can't steer it goalwards. 10 min Joe Bennett with another stupefyingly thick foul on the left touchline, on Hines again. Free-kick to Bradford from the right. 9 min Benteke crosses from the right. Good gets in just ahead of Agbonlahor. 8 min Bannan gives the ball away in midfield. Hines dances down the right, with Bannan and Bennett for company. Eventually Hines tries to slink between them, and Bennett can come away with the ball. 6 min Benteke! Lowton! Just over! More trouble for Bradford from their left flank, as N'Zogbia cuts inside McHugh and crosses. Benteke heads it back across goal, and Lowton can't react in time to direct it towards goal from six yards. 5 min Long ball out of the Bradford defence, and Hanson brings it down nicely. That's going to be Bradford's outlet all night long. 3 min I'm going to make an early prediction: there will be goals. Goals and goals and goals. Villa have no choice but to go for it. Bradford, therefore, will go for it too. N'Zogbia plays a one-two with Delph and crosses for Benteke, who heads it just wide with Duke struggling to get there. 2 min Bradford have started well. Lots of players getting early touches. Hanson tries to curl a cross past Vlaar. The ball comes back off Hanson and goes out for a goal-kick. 1 min Delph crunches in on Hines! That really was a brainless challenge by Delph on his own left touchline. Hines was facing the crowd and was going absolutely nowhere. Chance for Bradford to swing in a free-kick. Villa clear. 19.46 Bradford in gold shirts and black shorts, Villa in claret and blue. We're away. 19.45 Villa in their pre-match huddle. Phil Parkinson looks like a man who's needed the toilet for the last 15 years. 19.40 Looks like a very decent crowd in at Villa Park tonight. Light-blue flags fluttering all over. 19.20 The teams are in, and they're these. Aston Villa (4-4-2): Given; Lowton, Vlaar, Clark, Bennett; Delph, Ireland, Bannan, N'Zogbia; Benteke, Agbonlahor. Subs: Guzan, Holman, Lichaj, Carruthers, Stevens, Bent, Weimann. Subs: McLaughlin, Ravenhill, Reid, Thompson, Connell, Nelson, Turgott. 18.45 Bradford City 3 Aston Villa 1. What the hell was that? The answer, of course, is that it was simply the League Cup being the League Cup. English football's most maligned trophy has ended up providing its most sublime and ridiculous entertainment, like the thickest kid at school turning out to be a preternaturally gifted saxophonist. There is an argument that as the League Cup has become less and less important, it has got more and more interesting. Shunted further and further into the depths of winter, frequently changing its name, not even pretending to be prestigious any more, it actually encourages teams to play with abandon. Chelsea 5-4 Manchester United. Derby 5-5 Scunthorpe. Reading 5-7 Arsenal. Have a go. What can you lose? The statistics back this up too. This season's competition has averaged a staggering 3.61 goals per game. Moving into tonight's territory, meanwhile, the last 10 semi-final second legs have produced 44 goals between them. Villa's 6-4 humdinger against Blackburn in 2010 was a particular highlight. More than goals, though, what two-legged semi-finals provide is drama and unpredictability. It's been nine years since both first-leg winners reached the final, which should be warning enough for Bradford and Swansea. Anybody who tries to tell you they know how tonight will go is lying through their teeth. Bradford, two goals up with 90 minutes to play. Who would have thought it? If they can hold out tonight, they will become the first fourth-tier club to reach the final since 1962, when most of the big teams didn't bother to enter. The only comparable feat would perhaps be Calais from the French fourth division, who reached the final of the Coupe de France in 2000 and actually led in the final against Nantes before conceding a late winner. Should Bradford make it to Wembley with a team that cost just £7,500 - and most of that was spent on Deep Heat - there would be a strong case for anointing it as the most remarkable achievement in English football history. So how can Aston Villa stop them? Well, Paul Lambert has opted for the curious pre-match strategy of targeting the club chaplain. Specifically, the Reverend Paul Deo, stadium announcer at Valley Parade and man of the cloth. At full-time in the first leg, His Holiness (yeah, I don't know titles) was alleged to have urged Bradford fans to "look for hotel rooms in London." "Disrespectful," was Lambert's verdict. His Excellency was both firmly apologetic and charmingly contrite, arguing that he had merely said Bradford fans could "be forgiven for looking for hotel rooms in London." And is not forgiveness, after all, one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity? Either way, it made Lambert look pretty petty. Talk about playing the clergyman and not the ball. Less crucifying, more crossing, please. It just goes to show how much pressure Lambert feels under at the moment, with his side still yet to win a league game since before Christmas. Needing to win by two goals at home brings its own pressure, too. Villa haven't done that since mid-September. Just to go over the rules again: away goals do not count until after extra time. If it's 2-0 or 4-2 or whatever after 90 minutes, we will play on. That rule saved Tottenham from humiliation in 2009 when they lost 3-0 to Burnley in the semi-final, having won the first leg 4-1. Under the Uefa away goals rule, they would have been out. Instead, they scraped home with a Roman Pavlyuchenko goal in the 118th minute. We'll have some team news for you very soon.