Neville plays the mentor to Everton's European rookies

Phil Neville has warned Everton that they must quickly learn about the demands of European football. The former Manchester United utility player, who has a Champions' League winners' medal from his stint on the bench in the Nou Camp in 1999, saw the chances of adding a Uefa Cup medal to his CV take a blow on Thursday night.

And ahead of today's Premier League trip to Aston Villa, Neville has been explaining the facts of life to his European rookie colleagues.

They were held 1-1 by nine-man Metalist Kharkiv in the Uefa Cup first round, first leg at a stunned Goodison Park, where Andrew Johnson missed two penalties but Neville believes in collective responsibility.

"OK, so we missed penalties, but the worst thing of all was to concede a goal at that stage, that made it a nightmare," Neville said. "We have to learn about stopping opponents from grabbing vital away goals if we are to progress in this competition. But I feel the game is pretty evenly poised. We must go to the Ukraine and play a lot better."

He added: "We all know this is a big tie for this club. Everton should be in Europe and it is up to us to make sure we stay there now we have fought so hard to get into the tournament. We are desperate to get into the group stages of the Uefa Cup, and we have to face up to the second leg knowing we have to perform much better than we did collectively in the first game."

Everton and Neville know they must put things right in the return leg on 4 October, and their failure to build on a 1-0 lead against a side suffering two red cards is the real reason they are in a precarious situation.

"After we had gone ahead and they were initially down to 10 men, we needed to kick on, score more goals and finish the tie off there and then," the England international said. "That we didn't manage that means that the second leg will be a difficult game for us.

"We needed to score a couple more, then the game is over. We would have wanted them to be disheartened and then we could have scored a few more.

"But the fact that we didn't, and we missed the initial penalty, gave them a real lift. Then we got another penalty and that was missed as well. All this was giving them a lift and encouragement."

The club's manager David Moyes accepts that Everton will need their spirits lifted ahead of the trip to Villa Park. "I am sure Andy will need his confidence built up ahead of the Villa game, but then we all will," he said.

Everton are hoping that the midfielder Mikel Arteta recovers from an ankle problem to face Villa. Arteta was a late withdrawal from Thursday's match after a training injury.

The goalkeeper Stefan Wessels is expected to continue as Tim Howard's replacement with the American still recovering from a broken finger. Steven Pienaar is likely to have recovered from a groin problem.

Moyes' Aston Villa counterpart, Martin O'Neill, has made it clear he is very much his own man when it comes to doing his job – and would not welcome the kind of situation Jose Mourinho found himself in when he had to work with a director of football at Stamford Bridge.

"In the case of appointing a director of football, I am sure the owner of the club would ask me and of course I would say, 'No'," the Ulsterman said. "If the owner has the sort of relationship where the manager is allowed to do what he wants, that is the only thing a manager can ever ask for – to be in charge of affairs. That is the way I've tried to work. If I thought there was some sort of interference I would acknowledge that I wasn't overly pleased with it. But you have to earn that right [by] doing well at the football club."

Of more pressing concern to O'Neill is ensuring that his side bounce back from an indifferent performance at Manchester City last weekend, when they lost 1-0. He knows there is now great expectancy among the Villa supporters who believe the club is on the verge of breaking into the upper echelons of the Premier League.

An indifferent scoring record is holding them back but O'Neill is optimistic that is about to change. Any improvement is likely to centre around John Carew, who has struggled.

"John has shown some good goalscoring form with Norway on international duty and I am hoping that he can quickly show the same finishing for Villa," O'Neill said.

"Our real form has not been shown in the goals we've scored. That will come, I am sure, when the likes of John Carew click in front of goal."