O'Neill: Petrov will come good

Aston Villa manager Martin O'Neill believes Stiliyan Petrov will react positively to being dropped against Chelsea.



The Bulgarian international only came on for 11 minutes of the 2-0 Barclays Premier League victory on Sunday. He is now away on international duty, preparing to face Holland in a Euro 2008 qualifier on Saturday.

O'Neill told the club's official website: "Stiliyan Petrov is going through a tough time at this minute but he'll come back. The crowd have got more than anxious at a time when he maybe needs them behind him, just to settle him down.

"But players have to come through these things - I had it myself in my career and every player gets it at some stage or another. It's been suggested that I've put Stiliyan in front of some of the other lads simply because I'd bought him.

"The bottom line is I really couldn't care less who's in the team - if the players are doing it for me, then I couldn't care less whether he cost £6.5million or £200,000."

bit unlucky

O'Neill continued: "If I think they deserve to go into the side, they will go in the side. That's why I think Craig Gardner was a bit unlucky against Chelsea. He's not a right-back, he's essentially a midfielder.

"You could turn around and tell me Shaun Maloney, who I paid £1million for, was desperately unlucky not to play against Chelsea. You can go down that road until you're blue in the face.

"No one has a divine right to be in the team. I'd hope that at some stage the same would apply to Gareth Barry, but he's so good for us at the moment that he's in. If I had someone better than Ashley Young - and there's not many better than him anyway up and down the country - then he'd play.

"We have a squad here and all these boys will play games. I'm not saying we've got the ability to rotate like the top four sides, but we'll need these players. It's got nothing to do with justification - I left Stiliyan Petrov out the team at Celtic and for some European games. But he always came roaring back."