Aston Villa Football Club News

• Nickname:The Villains
• Founded:1874
• Manager:Alex McLeish

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Petrov backed to bounce back

11 Mar 2008 - 14:06:48

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Martin O'Neill insists out-of-favour midfielder Stiliyan Petrov still has a future at Aston Villa.

The Bulgaria international has been left out of the first-team squad since the 4-1 victory against Newcastle United more than a month ago, but O'Neill says the former Celtic star has not been frozen out.

"Everybody's in the squad," confirmed the Villa boss. "I think an awful lot has been made of this. Why? I don't know.

"I've rested him for a couple of games. Hopefully he'll come back and, when he does, I'm hoping he's raring to go. Who knows?

"Stiliyan Petrov travelled down with us for the game at Arsenal but I decided to go with the same 16.

"I can't stress this enough, everybody's in contention, everybody has a part to play. We don't have the squad for it not to be so. Could Petrov return? It could be tomorrow night.

"Everybody's ready. This might not necessarily be Stiliyan's view. He might think 'well no, I'm ready to play' but, even in the days at Celtic, all the players got left out for a game or two. They were all then ready to come back in."