O'Neill offers Carson support

Villa boss cites Shilton as example to follow

Last updated: 23rd November 2007   Subscribe to RSS Feed

O'Neill offers Carson support

Carson: Tipped to learn from mistake

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Martin O'Neill is confident Scott Carson can bounce back from his Wembley nightmare against Croatia.

Having made his England debut against Austria last Friday, Carson was given his first competitive international start in Wednesday's decisive Euro 2008 qualifier.

But Carson's error inside the opening 10 minutes gifted Niko Kranjcar the opening goal for Croatia en route to Slaven Bilic's side posting a 3-2 win.

Aston Villa boss O'Neill, who currently has the keeper on loan from Liverpool, has urged the 22-year-old to take a leaf out of England's record caps holder Peter Shilton's book.

Disappointed

"He'll be disappointed, there's absolutely no question about that," said O'Neill on Sky Sports News.

"He's 22 years of age. He's incredibly young and I would be hoping eventually that this is something that is just part of your career.

"Peter Shilton made a mistake way back in 1973 against Poland and he only turned out to be the best goalkeeper in the world after that.

"Scott Carson has a long way to go before he is considered anything like Peter Shilton, but I suppose he can draw some sort of comfort from that, in that it can happen to the very best.

"Of course he will be pretty down because England failed to qualify and, in the heat of all this, I'm sure his great save to keep England in it at 2-1 will be forgotten, but that's the way it goes.

"He'll learn from that and his position in goal is so, so important that, obviously, people make mistakes further out the field, but any mistake he makes will be highlighted."