Dean Saunders knows all too well the scale of the task facing Aston Villa at Wembley on Sunday.

The Villans will be rank outsiders when they take on Manchester City, with some bookmakers pricing them as high 20/1 to lift the trophy.

Former Wrexham boss Saunders was central to Villa's League Cup final success against Manchester United in the 1993/94 season, scoring twice in a superb 3-1 victory.

There are clear parallels between this weekend's clash and their mid 90s triumph in which the unfancied midlanders denied Sir Alex Ferguson's all-conquering United side a domestic treble.

“I know it’s a big statement but it’s probably one of the best teams they’ve ever had,” said Saunders in an interview with Villa's website.

“Cantona and Hughes up front, Giggs, Kanchelskis, Ince, Keane, Pallister, Bruce, Irwin, Parker, Les Sealey in goal. What a team! Ron Atkinson had to convince us that we could beat them. We went into the meeting in the hotel in London and he had their team on the board and everyone was sitting there looking at it – he shouldn’t have put it up, really.

“We’re looking at it thinking, how are we going to beat them?! And by the time we came out of the meeting we thought they were average, the way Ron spoke.

He did his job. Genius. Graham Fenton played his first game, I played up front on my own, I didn’t particularly enjoy the game, I wasn’t involved. I scored two in a cup final, but I didn’t enjoy the game, I couldn’t get a kick of the ball! I was up front on my own and Dalian (Atkinson) and Tony Daley were either side.”

Villa's ticket allocation rapidly sold out for the club's first cup final since their FA Cup defeat to Arsenal in 2015, with 33,095 of the claret and blue faithful set to pack Wembley's West End stand.

Saunders know the veracity of Villa's support all too well and ensured one fan took home a unique memento from the 94 final.

He said: “I remember all the Villa fans packed out and thinking ‘we can’t let all these fans down today.

“They’ve all come all the way, I know we’re playing Man United but what a day out for everyone if we win.

“And you remember things, I remember a fan waving to me through the fence at the end of the game, and there was a massive divot of grass from Wembley so I threw the divot over the fence and about five years later the man wrote to me and showed me a picture of his garden and he had planted that divot in his garden and staked it all off. He got a little plaque he had engraved and put Wembley 1994!”