English style Pale Ale help please.....

I was looking for a Basic English Pale Ale recipe for my first All Grain brew and came across this one on line and thought it looked simple enough, but after going to my brew shop it kind of bummed me out

Recipe and story below

All Grain.... ( My first All grain batch! )

9.00 lbs Pale Malt ( Maris Otter )
2.00 Victory Malt
0.50 lbs Caramel Matl ( 40l ) Briess
2.00oz Fuggles (55min)
1.00oz Kent Goldings.. ( 5min)
English Ale White Labs (WLP002)

So i went to my brew shop and purchased all these ingredients which cost me roughly 45$ Which i thought was a little high, but do not mind helping out a local business on occasion.

So when i go into my brew shop the brew guy pretty much tells me Victory Malt has no business being in a traditional English Pale Ale.

My whole purpose in making this beer was so that i could develop a good idea of what a EPA should taste like. Now i am worried that the American Victory malt will pull me off course from what i initially wanted to do. I already have all the grains crushed up and ready to go. I plan on brewing tomorrow. I asked the guy at the shop if it would taste like an English Pale Ale and he replied with .... It will make beer. ..which for a beginner brewer this is not the type of comment that makes a person feel very confident.. ...So now kinda frustrated i wanted to ask you guys if these 2.00 lbs of Victory Malt would change the style so much that this would not be considered and EPA? If so no big deal and i will just make it and try another one next week, but would like to hear what some of you guy's think....

There's nothing wrong with adding some victory malt to a british pale, but 2 lbs. is a little excessive. If you add the full two pounds, it will dominate the flavor and will take a long time to come into balance with the rest of the beer.

would allowing the beer to condition for a longer amount of time allow this over powering to settle out?

Yes, to a degree. The one time I used too much Victory, it was really overpowering for a couple months. Then it started to mellow down a bit and instead of standing out, it began to become part of the whole, if that makes sense. But with two whole pounds, it may never completely blend in. I'm sure it will be enjoyable though, and if you found the recipe somewhere, someone probably enjoyed it enough to share.

Thanks for the info KingBrian...

I'm doing an EPA today:

9 lb Maris Otter

1 lb. C-40

0.5 lb Victory

Haven't quite decided on hop amounts yet, but I'm going Brewer's Gold for bittering and Fuggles for F/A.