Aston Villa: O'Neill is optimistic of Sidwell's return

Sep 30 2009 by Mathew Kendrick, Birmingham Mail

“I’m told we’re yet to lose a league game he’s started in,” said O’Neill. “I’m surprised he hasn’t been reminding me.

“He set out this season and with Gareth going everyone thinks there’s a possibility here. He accepted the fact we would probably go and sign some players and he just wanted to have a crack at it and see how things would go. That’s fine.”

Sidwell, who was plagued by niggly injuries last season, produced one of his best displays to date in claret and blue during the victory over Portsmouth.

With Nigel Reo-Coker still out of favour following his bust-up with O’Neill the manager used Fabian Delph alongside Stiliyan Petrov on Saturday.

But Villa aim to use Delph sparingly to ease him into the pressures of Premier League football and would welcome Sidwell’s return against City.

And O’Neill believes the energetic red-head can become the goalscoring midfielder Villa have lacked as soon as he gets off the mark for the season.

“He had a decent pre-season,” said O’Neill. “The longer things went on in the Peace Cup the more games he played. He has done fine.

“I have been very pleased with him. I thought that the game against Portsmouth was his best.

“He played really well for us, was very strong and aggressive and I think he’s capable of scoring.

“I think when he gets off the mark he will get going.”

O’Neill is hoping Sidwell can get over his recent bad luck with injuries to enjoy a sustained run in the team.

“He did it kicking the ball in the warm-up,” added O’Neill.

“He strained it. Our doctor Roddy MacDonald told me he didn’t think I should use him in the second half of the Cardiff game and then it got a bit worse on the bench.

“The next morning he was still feeling it so I thought the best thing was just to rule him out of Saturday’s game.

“I think he went through his career at Reading and hardly knew what an injury was. Sometimes these things happen, you pick up things.”