Aston Villa boss Martin O'Neill has dismissed John Terry's claims that Aston Villa fade in matches. The England central defender believes Villa, who visit Bolton on Saturday, start to tire after 50-60 minutes in games.

But O'Neill is adamant statistics do not back up Terry's comments and hopes they "do not come back to haunt him" with Villa due to meet Chelsea again in an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley on April 10.

The former Celtic boss said: "I thought it was an idle comment from John Terry because statistically it is not proved.

"In fact, if you want to go into statistics, and we use them like every football club, we are one of the fittest teams in the country.

"Those sort of comments, you would hope, wouldn't come back to haunt the player or his team in the near future.

"If they (Chelsea) had watched us this last couple of weeks, I don't believe they could have seen that point."

O'Neill added: "If you go back to the Carling Cup final, on a quagmire of a pitch at Wembley, we were attacking Manchester United vigorously towards the end of the game to try and retrieve the match.

"Even Sir Alex Ferguson said he was glad to hear the final whistle.

"We scored an 83rd-minute goal against Wolves, when we pressed continuously in the second half, and that was only two weeks ago.

"Then, in the game after that, we were pressing continuously towards the end against Sunderland, trying to force a win. It's an idle comment and I wouldn't give it too much credence."