O’Neill praises defensive strengths of Aston Villa newcomer James Collins
Nov 4 2009 by Mathew Kendrick, Birmingham Post
“I think he was able to settle in. All the things I saw in James’s game he has shown fantastically well.
“The ability to be really composed under pressure. He can play the ball, manoeuvre it, control it and he really tries to defend to the best of his ability. I think he can become one of the best.”
Collins’s capabilities remind O’Neill of another defender who served him so well during his days at Leicester City, Matt Elliott.
Like Collins, Elliott provoked an under- whelming reaction when he signed, but the solid centre half soon proved his critics wrong.
“Collins has all the attributes,” said O’Neill.
“In many aspects he reminds me of Matty Elliott. When we took him from Oxford people thought he couldn’t make the step up and he turned out to be as good as there was.
“He wasn’t that quick, James is quicker, but Matt could control and play it, and play centre forward if he wanted to, without a problem.
“He would never embarrass himself. He was fantastic, won the League Cup for us, captained the side as well. Collins has got all of those attributes.”
Collins has shown no ill-effects of his cruciate ligament problem at West Ham and O’Neill believes recovering from a serious injury can sometimes make players even stronger.
“You always hope when someone plays a reasonable number of consecutive games that they’ve got over these injuries,” said O’Neill.
“I think that was an obvious concern when people looked at his past record and realised that he had not played the games, but they were serious injuries.
“He had the cruciate problem and that does take some time to get over. I was lucky enough to see West Ham at the start of the season when we were looking at him and I thought that he was a good footballer, but there might have been a bit of a concern about injuries.
“I hate talking about injuries, but he has done remarkably well, done brilliantly for us, and I’m quite sure if you were to ask him, the injuries are not plaguing him.”
Villa will be without suspended defender Carlos Cuellar and injured winger James Milner tonight, but captain Stiliyan Petrov is expected to overcome a shin problem.
