I slightly agree, its a sad sign of the times when clubs are allowing CERTAIN competitions to take preference over others.
Unfortunatley its a money game these days and given a choice of winning the UEFA cup or ensuring 4th place finish in the league, the league position will always win as thats where the money is. Villa do not have the strength and depth of the likes of Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool etc so simply cannot afford to risk injury to their star names as they need them for the 4th place push. Maybe in time, once champions league is achieved and more money comes in, they can buy more strength and depth to cope with these extra competitions.
That all is of course from the clubs point of view, which has a case for arguement against your point, but its the fans who suffer i guess, they pay good money to see their team win.