James Milner hails Aston Villa fighting spirit

Sep 19 2008 by Mark Woodward, Birmingham Mail

JAMES Milner admitted Villa had struggled to get out of first gear against feisty Bulgarian opponents Litex Lovech but insisted they would not blame the pitch.

Martin O’Neill’s men were a goal down after just 10 minutes to the domestic cup holders and had to fight back with victory ultimately coming against a nine-man side.

The match had been a doubt just 12 hours before kick-off due to 48 hours of torrential rain, which left areas of the field badly waterlogged, but after a day of warmer dry weather and a round-the-clock effort from the Litex groundsmen, the game was able to go ahead, although the pitch did cut up badly.

Milner, who joined Villa from Newcastle in a £12million deal last month, said: “These games are never easy. I have been involved in one or two UEFA Cup games before with Newcastle and people probably thought we were just playing a team they had never heard of from Bulgaria. But we knew it would be tough.

“The pitch was pretty heavy and was cutting up quite badly but it was the same for both sides.”

A relieved O’Neill confirmed his side had taken their time to get going but said he was delighted with the overall result.

He said: “It was a real sluggish start. We did the one thing we really didn’t want to do and give away an early goal and it took a long time for us to get into our stride.

“Lovech played very well indeed, as we thought they would do.”

He added: “It was frustrating to play like this as we had played really well against Tottenham on Monday night and we had hoped with that momentum to have started more brightly.

“But if you said before the game we would have won and scored three goals, I would have been delighted.”