Martin O'Neill thought referee Lee Probert was wrong to send off Carlos Cuellar in Aston Villa's 1-1 draw at Everton.

Cuellar was shown a second yellow card in the 89th minute at Goodison Park after Probert adjudged the defender's tackle on Ayegbeni Yakubu to be a foul.

Cuellar - who was also booked for a challenge on Leighton Baines - saw red just minutes after Everton had been reduced to 10 men with the dismissal of Diniyar Bilyaletdinov.

Probert was correct to send off the Russian in O'Neill's opinion, but the Villa manager felt the referee's decision against Cuellar was poor.

"The referee was right on the spot for both of them and I think it's pretty clear that he has got the first decision absolutely correct - it's a really nasty challenge and I think it's straightforward," said O'Neill.

"But I think he got the second one wrong. I thought at the time that Carlos got the first touch to the ball and I've watched it back since. It's pretty evident that that was the case. I thought the referee would have spotted it.

"I have said before how difficult this game is to referee, really hard. Everybody has the benefit of hindsight afterwards.

"But on that particular occasion I thought that it looked relatively straightforward, and coming so quickly after the other incident, I can't say that I was overly impressed."

Bilyaletdinov was given his marching orders for a two-footed tackle on Stiliyan Petrov and O'Neill said he was unsure how much damage the challenge might have done to his player.

"He (Petrov) is not so clever at the moment," O'Neill said.

"He tried to play on and we will see how he is in the morning.

"He (Bilyaletdinov) is sliding in and holding his foot up - it's a sending-off offence, straightforward. If it happened in reverse I would have no complaints."

Bilyaletdinov had opened the scoring for Everton in first-half stoppage time, but substitute John Carew put Villa level within two minutes of the restart and O'Neill admitted he was delighted to come away with a draw.

"I think we coped reasonably well in the first half and so to concede in first-half stoppage time was particularly galling for us," O'Neill said.

"We got back into it in the second half, though, and for a while I thought we might well go on to win it. On reflection I think a draw is a fair result.

"It has never ever been an easy place to come, despite the fact that Everton are trying to eke out a victory at the moment - which they will get. They are as resilient as they come so I am pleased we got something out of the game."

Everton boss David Moyes, who had seen his injury-ravaged side lose three times in successive away matches prior to the fixture, was satisfied with a point given the testing circumstances.

Asked if he thought it was a fair result, Moyes said: "Probably, because I don't think either goalkeeper had a great deal of saves to make.

"I think the teams are well matched, but we are not playing with a great deal of confidence. We are a little bit out of shape at the moment.

"I thought we nullified Aston Villa quite well but I didn't think we were able to play our game because at this moment in time, without one or two players who might change things for us, it makes our set-up slightly different.

"I wanted us to keep a clean sheet more than anything today. I wanted us to not concede a goal and I thought if we could do that we could win the game."

Moyes accepted Bilyaletdinov's sending-off, but suggested that his team had suffered worse in the past.

He said: "I don't have any complaints about it. I've seen situations like that where it could have been a sending-off, but I've also seen tackles against our players which haven't been given that are far worse."