Petrov Nearly Joined Portsmouth

Stiliyan Petrov has admitted ‘I was very close to joining Portsmouth. They came in with a few bids to be honest – if Celtic had accepted their first, second or third bid, I could’ve been their player now.’

Luckily for him (?!) Celtic refused the bids and when O’Neill came in for him there was no other place he wanted to go.

‘I’m a Villa player now so it doesn’t matter. I made the right decision coming here and like every player at this club, we’ll fight to get to a good place in the table. That’s what we’re going to do. We won’t put our heads down just because we’ve had one or two bad performances. We’ll fight and try to play well again. The main thing now is how we’re going to get out of this situation that we found ourselves in after Wednesday night. We know we’re not going to lose out on a European place just because of one bad performance.’

‘We’re playing in the best league in the world and we expect teams to get at us. Everyone likes playing in it because no one knows how the results will go. We have to bounce back by having a good result at Portsmouth tomorrow and we’ll go there and fight to get the right result. It’s good to have another game so soon – I think that’s what everyone wants because we all want the match so we can put things right and give everything.’