Martin O'Neill believes the current Aston Villa squad is the strongest in his three and a half years as manager.

And he admits that he will rotate players on a more regular basis as the current campaign progresses after learning lessons from last season.

Villa operated with one of the smallest squads in the Barclays Premier League and ran out of steam in the final two months when they were overhauled by Arsenal and Everton and finished sixth.

O'Neill said: "You have to be pretty careful when getting a result or two against the top sides like Liverpool and Chelsea and then thinking you have made all this fantastic progress.

"But we have got some really good players and we have a decent squad with some good players not getting into the side at the moment and I think that has been really encouraging.

"It is probably the strongest we have been in the three years I have been here.

"There are only eight games gone, we've done fine, with three of those games against sides that you would definitely feel are going to contest the top four in Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea."

O' Neill added: "There is no point going into depth about this but we have maybe some lessons to learn from last season. We had a small squad and that was our fault.

"In February, when we played Chelsea here, we were third in the league going very strong.

"We went into that game with a lot of confidence and got beaten and from there on, we surrendered fourth spot and finished sixth.

"I didn't think it was as disastrous as people were making out. But I did say to the players at the start of this season that we would hope to rotate a little.

"Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool rotate but once I rotate, it is called dropping players. Not everyone is happy with that.

"I will rotate the side and I'm hoping we will be able to withstand that."