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Aston Villa easily progressed to the Capital One Cup third round after sweeping aside League One Rotherham.

Villa boss Paul Lambert named a strong side and they established control early on when Andreas Weimann took advantage of Kari Arnason's mistake to smash in.

Christian Benteke then made it 2-0 before the break after he rose to nod in Gabriel Agbonlahor's cross.

The Belgian striker was involved again for the third as he flicked the ball to Fabian Delph for a smart finish.

Villa do not have a Premier League game this weekend because they have already played scheduled opponents Chelsea, who face Bayern Munich in the European Super Cup on Friday evening.

So Lambert held nothing back against Steve Evans's Rotherham side, who had enjoyed an unbeaten start to the season.

Villa reached last season's League Cup semi-final after Lambert picked similarly strong teams before being beaten by Bradford of League Two.

They could have had a greater margin of victory over the Millers, but were wasteful in the final 30 minutes, Agbonlahor and Joe Bennett both missing good opportunities.

Although well beaten, the Millers acquitted themselves well, particularly in the first half, where Alex Revell could have twice given them the lead, while Michael O'Connor's off-target free-kick was the highlight of their second half.

Aston Villa boss Paul Lambert: "You have got to earn the right to win the football match but I thought we would with the team we put out. Some of the football was excellent. The third goal - the one-touch football was brilliant.

"There is a different feeling this time to Bradford. The squad is really together and strong and we trusted them to go out there and perform and they have been excellent.

"Cup football is a difficult thing because you can play against a small team and they are a totally different animal to what you are used to playing in the league. But we handled it well."

Rotherham boss Steve Evans: "To create cup upsets you have to go in front, it's Roy of Rovers to think you can come from 2-0 down. We had to go in front and put pressure on Villa so it was very hard went we went behind.

"For 25 minutes we were by far the better side, we had two or three good chances, dominated possession, but we made a mistake and they had the quality to hurt us.

"It's two mistakes for the first two goals, we have to accept that the first one was an incredible finish and the second one, well there aren't many better players than Benteke to head that in at the far post.

"When they got the second it was a long night for us and we were chasing the ball a lot."