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John Gregory is holding on for a hero.
The Aston Villa manager is looking to Benito Carbone to provide the kind of spark seen at other clubs from the likes of Dennis Bergkamp and Gianfranco Zola to get his side's FA Carling Premiership challenge back on song. Gregory believes Carbone can add the flair that has been lacking at Villa since Dwight Yorke's departure to Manchester United 14 months ago. The Italian, who has signed a short-term contract until the end of the season after finally quitting Sheffield Wednesday this week, will make his Villa debut in Saturday's home league game with struggling Wimbledon. He will go straight into attack despite his lack of match fitness alongside Dion Dublin because of injuries to the club's other strikers Julian Joachim and Darius Vassell. Villa need to get their campaign back on the rails after collecting only one point from their last three games. Gregory said: ``Benito is the sort of player we've been missing since Dwight left. ``If you look at the top sides, the Yorkes, Bergkamps and Zolas are all similar type of players who will not only score goals but create opportunities for others. ``Bergkamp must have created 30% of Anelka's goals last season and Zola has done the same with Chelsea. I believe Benito can do that sort of thing for us as well. ``The barometer of a player is his team-mates, whether he gets a good reaction or not - and it is obvious that he has gone down well already with our boys. ``He can provide the unexpected. He would have been the sort of player in our recent game with Liverpool who could have produced something to turn a good performance into a great performance. ``I also think the Villa fans are looking for a hero. If you look at the successful clubs they have someone who can light up the stadium - like Yorke, Bergkamp or Zola. ``They are the players that the fans buy the shirts of. We've had one or two people here who could have become heroes but it hasn't quite happened. ``Our fans want someone they can hang their hat on and get them out of their seats. Hopefully it will be Benito.'' In addition to Joachim and Vassell, Gregory will also again be without central defender Ugo Ehiogu through injury, but goalkeeper David James will continue his comeback after being involved in a fatal car crash last week. The former Liverpool player praised his team-mates and the supporters for helping him to recover from an incident in which a pensioner was killed. James said: ``Everyone at the club has been great about it. The players and the fans have all be very good as well as the gaffer. ``He said I could take as much time off as I needed but I wanted to get back on with my life. ``When I was at home all I was doing was thinking about everything, weighing everything up, and I would probably still be sitting there now. But I needed to get back, although it is a very difficult situation. ``When I came back to Villa there were no difficult questions. They let me get back into things and we are carrying on as normal.'' Gregory is anticipating a tough battle even though he admits Wimbledon probably do not contain the same type of characters now as in the heyday of Vinnie Jones. He said: ``They used to be bloody horrible to play against, before they were household names. Everyone knew who was in the Crazy Gang. ``Now the personnel has changed so much but they still play the same way. I still expect the same amount of balls coming into our penalty area and at set-pieces they will always be a major threat. They are just as tough to play against as in the past.'' Carling Net |