O'Neill: Petrov can hack it at the top

Oct 31 2007 By Bill Howell, Birmingham Mail

MARTIN O'Neill believes Stiliyan Petrov heads into Saturday's home clash with Derby County with a burning desire to finally show what he is capable of.

The Villa boss concedes that both he and the Bulgarian midfielder agree he has not shown anything like his true self since his £8million transfer from Celtic 14 months ago.

But following his decent performance at Bolton on a rare start, O'Neill can see brighter times ahead once Petrov grows in confidence.

"Someone made the point: 'is he under more pressure?'- like anything else, Stiliyan has a much higher expectation of himself than he has shown here,and I have, to be perfectly honest, because I know what he is capable of doing", said O'Neill.

"I thought he did okay, and he still has a big point to prove. He wants to prove it, and he wants to show people here that he is a much, much better player than he has shown here.

"And I am hoping that over the course of time, he will do it."

To his credit, Petrov had to get to grips with a different role at Bolton.

"He played the holding role in midfield, and in fact I wouldn't have remembered ten times in my five years at Celtic that he played a holding role", remembers O'Neill.

"He was always the one thrusting forward and getting into the penalty area. That's fine at the moment. Let him try and get a bit of confidence back into his game. He got plenty of touches early on and started to get a wee bit of momentum going.

"And I thought he was still going towards the end so, it was pleasing enough."

Petrov has played a defensive role for Bulgaria on frequent occasions.

O'Neill continued: "Part of the problem at the time was that he used to go and play that role for Bulgaria whilst we were at Celtic. Stoichkov had him as the holding player and I couldn't see it at the time.

"It wasn't a problem, I wasn't going to argue. A country can choose whatever position they want.

"But he had never any massive problem adjusting back, although maybe he did in his own mind when he came back.

"But he was playing with some quality players: Henrik Larsson was a terrific player and Chris Sutton was in his prime at the time. They could hold it up - Sutton could hold it up forever if he wanted to to allow a few players to join in.

"At the moment, I suppose, with Carew not being in our team, we kind of lack that bit of extra presence in the centre of the team."