Aston Villa's ineligible player could see Man Utd knocked out of Conti Cup | OneFootball

Aston Villa Women beat Sunderland 7-0 in Wednesday’s final Conti Cup group stage clash but places in the quarter-finals are up for debate after the Villans fielded an ineligible player.

Villa were 3-0 up at half-time when they introduced January signing Noelle Maritz, signed from Arsenal this month.

Maritz, though, had already featured for Arsenal three times in this season’s competition, lining up against Bristol City, Southampton and Tottenham before making her move to the Midlands.

According to the rules of the competition, any club that fields an ineligible player will face an Independent Tribunal, who can decide to either award the fixture to the opposition or “any such other order that the Independent Tribunal may decide”.

That leaves the door open for excluding Villa from the rest of the competition, but it appears the default suggestions would be to award the match to Sunderland.

If that is the decision the tribunal reaches, Manchester United would be knocked out as a result. The Conti Cup’s format sees the two best second-place sides qualify for the quarter-finals along with the five group winners.

Manchester United are currently the second best second-place side from the group stages, with nine points from four games. But, if awarded the three points for Wednesday’s match, Sunderland would move on to 10 points from their four games.

It will be a nervy wait in Manchester, where boss Marc Skinner is already under pressure with the team failing to navigate the Champions League play-off rounds at the start of the season and finding themselves 10 points behind WSL leaders Chelsea in the league.