Petrov names five Celtic players good enough for Aston Villa, including ‘incredible midfielder’ – exclusive
Aston Villa have a long way to go to compete for the Premier League title but the club are “moving in the right direction” under Unai Emery, Stiliyan Petrov has exclusively told Football365.
Petrov played at StriveAid on Sunday to help raise money for CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably). You can donate right here. It’s a great cause.
We had the opportunity to sit down with the former Aston Villa and Celtic captain and we asked him if Villa’s progression will end up putting them in contention to win the Premier League under Emery.
“It will be difficult,” he said. “The problem is the consistency over the season.
“You can say that if it’s not Man City it’s Liverpool, if it’s not Liverpool then Arsenal are also there. Those teams, the champions, hardly lose more than five games and this is what Villa need to understand.
“Becoming a champion…Villa are going in the right direction and this season is really important because Villa want to show that they can challenge that position.
“They have to be consistent, they have to bring more finances, they have to attract better players and they have to build up to bridge that gap. At the moment, I think there is a bigger gap but in the future with the owners still ambitious, they can go far.
“At Villarreal, at Villa, he’s (Emery) been given power on the sporting side, the coaching side, signing players, choosing players, a style of play, the vision of the club. This is something not a lot of clubs let managers have this power and Villa have allowed Unai Emery to do that and it seems he knows what he’s doing, he knows his team, knows the club now and it’s good to see he’s moving in the right direction.”
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Aston Villa host Celtic in the Champions League in the Petrov derby in January, so instead of asking him to give us a combined XI, we asked him to tell us which Celtic players get in Emery’s team.
The legendary Bulgarian replied: “You’ve got Alistair Johnston. You’ve got Callum McGregor, who is an incredible midfielder.
“[Daizen] Maeda, not many teams would turn down his energy, the way he plays. Kyogo [Furuhashi], the way he plays, he is very positive in his movement.
“[Reo] Hatate, he is really maturing, he’s getting stronger and stronger, scoring and creating goals, he is a box-to-box midfielder and you don’t see many midfielders like that at the moment. Many of those players can be in that (Aston Villa) team.
“I am looking forward to that game because there are two great managers, two attacking teams and I think it will be a cracking game because there is a lot of space to be exploited, a lot of speed, a lot of good technical players. I’m looking forward to that game.
“The way things are going, both teams will need points. Let’s take a point each and then both going through.
“Villa, at the moment, they really have a chance to make that top eight. They’ve got a few games left that they have got a chance to win and at the end they will look at where they are and I know it’s going to go down to the last game because there are some big teams that haven’t picked up all their points yet.
“At the end, we will see where they stand.”
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