Captain Stiliyan Petrov today insisted Villa’s capitulation at Chelsea will have no bearing on their FA Cup semi-final and vowed: ‘We’ll be a different team’.

Martin O’Neill’s men saw their Champions League dream all but disappear for a second successive season after slumping to a 7-1 thrashing at Stamford Bridge on Saturday – their biggest ever Premier League defeat.

The result was described by the Villa boss as one of the most galling of his career but Petrov is adamant the claret and blues, who face Bolton this weekend, will be a different team by the time they renew acquaintances with Carlo Ancelotti’s men at Wembley on Saturday week.

“I don’t think it will have a bearing on the semi-final because it will be a different game,” he said.

“There were a few decisions that could have gone our way that went against us, but that’s the way football goes. At the moment it’s not going for us.

“They are always on top of their game. We’ve got a semi final to play, we need to play them and I think we will be a different side in the semi-final.”

Petrov admitted Villa’s collapse had come as a shock after they had entered the Chelsea clash boasting the best defensive record in the top flight.

“That’s the strange thing because we’ve been so good defensively all season and the boys have been magnificent,” he added.

“But you have games like that so you have to accept it. We know what we did wrong and we’ll have to try to put it right as quickly as possible.

“It is hurting. We all hurt, especially me. When it went to 3-1 we lost heart and we couldn’t keep going, which is not our way of playing.”

But he insists Villa, who are now seven points adrift of fourth place, will “battle until the end”.

“We’re trying to get back on track again,” he added. “We’re having a bad time. We hadn’t lost a league game before that this year but we haven’t picked up the results.

“We hope we’ll turn that around and that other teams will go through our situation. We’ll battle until the end and we’ll see what we’ve done right and what we’ve done wrong and where we’re going to finish.”