Aston Villa skipper Stiliyan Petrov believes rookie defender Ciaran Clark has a massive part to play in the club's future despite the signing of James Collins and Richard Dunne.
Clark made an impressive debut alongside Carlos Cuellar in Sunday's 2-0 home win over Fulham after Curtis Davies was ruled out with a recurrence of his shoulder problem.
The 19-year-old may now have to take a back seat following the arrival of Collins and Dunne from West Ham and Manchester City respectively. But Petrov believes the Academy product has already shown enough potential to be earmarked as a player who can make his mark long-term at Villa.
The Bulgarian international told Press Association Sport: "Ciaran Clark has got a big part to play. He was very impressive during pre-season.
"He played well in the Peace Cup over in Spain and against Fulham he acted like he has already got 100 games behind him. He was excellent. Gabby (Agbonlahor) was the man of the match for us - but Ciaran was not far behind him. I really mean that.
"It is great to see young boys with such confidence and ability, especially from the youth team, and you want to see players like that break into the first team."
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We do have a number of bright youngsters coming through the ranks at the moment, we need to get more players and getting them through from the grass roots is a cheap way of doing it!
I don't know if they'll be quite as successful as the youth policy that produced the likes of Giggs, Beckham, Scholes etc.. at Man Utd, but you never know.
We basically won the Peace cup with them, they're a good prospect for the future :)
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