Phil Bardsley: Colourful journey of the Salford Red now living the dream in Villa's claret and blue

Every weekend you can see them on suburban park pitches, urchins in shorts below their knees. As dads shout competitively or quietly cringe, they pursue the ball in a pack. Some kick at fresh air, others collapse in tears, clutching shins after minimal contact. And every once in a claret and blue moon, one gets spotted by a Premiership giant.

It happened to Phil Bardsley when he was just eight. There he was, striving to rise above the sliced clearances, skewed shots and goal celebrations copied from Match of the Day, when his potential was noted by scouts from Manchester United. Thirteen years on, he is living up to it with Aston Villa.

Bardsley was just another starry-eyed Salford boy who fantasised about emulating his Old Trafford heroes. Sneaking into their training ground, he used to watch them up close before being turfed out. Yet he had signed for the club before he turned nine. Even now, having joined Villa on loan until the end of the campaign, he remains the only current United player to have come through every level of the Academy.

This is a big season for Bardsley. He began it with another loan spell, at Rangers, an arrangement that acknowledged Gary Neville's extraordinary durability in the right-back role. His time in Glasgow proved eventful, if not in the way he hoped. Now, at 21, Villa have given him the opportunity to be a Premiership player.

The signs augur well for the crew-cut defender. Coming into a Villa side who had not won in 12 games and were in danger of letting the feel-good factor created by Martin O'Neill and a new owner, Randy Lerner, morph into a familiar sense of under-achievement, he has been on a winning team in two of his three appearances.

During his short time with the club, which today takes him to Reading, he has seen O'Neill stir the slumbering giant with a flurry of signings. Bardsley, having been so long on the fringe of great things, is keen to share in the awakening.

We meet at Bodymoor Heath, Villa's rural retreat. Such facilities were a part of his life even before the United talent-hoovers, who came to check on another boy, noticed the sharp tackler playing for Charlestown youth centre and offered him a trial.

"When you're eight, you haven't really got any idea about professional football," admits Bardsley. "But I lived near one of United's training grounds, at Littleton Road in Salford, and I used to go over to watch them at work all the time. We used to get autographs before we got chucked off. Then I watched through the railings or went upstairs in the social club my mum and dad ran so that I could get a better view.

"My earliest memories are of watching Eric Cantona, Gary Pallister, Steve Bruce, Peter Schmeichel and Roy Keane. Cantona was pure class, even when he was just practising. You can imagine how it felt for me to watch Keano when I was a United-daft kid and then to train alongside him near the end of his career at the club."

As Bardsley progressed through the various stages - Under-10s, associate schoolboy, trainee and full-time professional - the boys with whom he shared the adventure were called in, one by one, to hear the news that for them, the dream was over.

"I've seen dozens, maybe hundreds, of kids fall by the wayside, lots of them with fantastic ability," he recalls. "When you're coming through the ranks at United, every May is an anxious time. You never know whether you'll be kept on or released. It's a roller-coaster ride, especially for the YTS boys that have made it so far.

"Friends have come and gone, lads I've grown up with at United. I still keep in contact with several of them. There's David Poole at Stockport County, Phil Picken at Chesterfield and Alex Bruce, who's now at Ipswich, plus a fair few more."

What were the qualities that made him the last man standing? "Determination and dedication, I suppose. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, which was to play for Manchester United. I kept focused on that aim all the time. I achieved that, and whatever else happens to me in football, no one can take that away from me.

"For me, the annual thing about whether or not you'd survive was a spur. You had to treat every season as if it were the most important. That's what drove me on. It can have the opposite effect on some young players, making them tense and nervous. But for me, once the chance came to become part of United, it was a great feeling."

The only snag was that, having climbed the mountain, he found Neville fiercely protective of his spot at the summit. At 18, Bardsley was praised by Sir Alex Ferguson after a strong debut in the Carling Cup at West Bromwich. Later, he started Champions League games against Benfica and Lille.

Yet when Neville was fit, he was Ferguson's automatic choice. "It's difficult to have such a great player and professional ahead of you," Bardsley reflects. "You've got to step aside because he's the best right-back in the business. He'll take some shifting because of his hunger to succeed.

"It's the same with Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs. When they win something, they don't sit back and bask in the glory. They go again. Gary's captain now, so he will be more like that than ever. I thought I did quite well when I got in the side, but sometimes you have to hold your hands up and say, 'Fair enough'. I just hope some of Gary's desire and competitiveness has rubbed off on me. I'm confident it has. I believe I'm a born winner and I hope I can bring the winning mentality to Villa."

Much as he is relishing life there, which could result in a permanent transfer during the summer, he is also a born Red. Does it sadden him that he may have played his last match for United? "Of course. Sometimes it hurts, but you have to be honest and say, 'Maybe it wasn't meant to be'. People move on. Look at David Beckham and Nicky Butt - they left Old Trafford and did pretty well."

The loan move to Rangers during the last close season came with the personal encouragement of the United manager, a fan and player at Ibrox as a young man. Bardsley found the club in a state of flux under a new manager, Paul Le Guen. A red card for two bookings at Hibernian did not help his cause, and a forceful challenge on Thomas Buffel in training further annoyed Le Guen, who, somewhat bizarrely, disapproved of the physical side of football on the practice pitch.

"It was a clash of personalities," he says of his relationship with the Frenchman. "I don't think he liked that type of challenge. He came through a different football culture."

Bardsley did not play for Rangers again. After he returned to United, Le Guen stripped Barry Ferguson of the captaincy. "That was stupid," says Bardsley. "You can't do that to a player like him. He is Rangers. I think they've got a proper Rangers manager now [since Walter Smith returned]."

Villa came in for him last month. "From the outside, this looked like a club that was going in the right direction, and that's how it has been. You sense something is happening here and want to be a part of it. There's a fantastic manager and excellent coaching staff, plus an owner who backed Martin O'Neill in buying players."

The former Celtic manager's stock remains high among players and punters alike, as Bardsley learnt in Glasgow. "Even the 'enemy' - the Rangers people - have huge respect for him for what he brought to Scottish football." If there are similarities between O'Neill and Ferguson they are that each is "driven" in his passion for winning and expert in communicating his "will" to his charges.

One new team-mate was instantly familiar. Gabriel Agbonlahor scored a hat-trick against United reserves last season, with Bardsley on the receiving end. "I like to see myself as an attacking player - it's part of my job to get forward - and myself and Gabby have linked up well on the right so far. It's certainly better partnering him than facing him."

Bardsley was followed into Villa Park last month by three new forwards. Like the return to winning ways and a deserved England recall for O'Neill's captain, Gareth Barry, their arrival has lifted the mood at Bodymoor.

John Carew, he says, is more than a towering target man, the Norway striker possessing "brilliant feet". Ashley Young is "very lively through the middle or down the flanks - the kind you want on your side in training!" As for Shaun Maloney, whom he observed closely at Celtic, he is a player who can beat defenders and "takes a lethal set piece".

One day they could represent Scotland together, for Bardsley's father was born north of the border, but the pressing priority is to establish himself as a top-flight regular. Talking of fixtures, the team following Reading on Villa's itinerary are Arsenal, a name to stir every red-blooded United man wherever he plies his trade.

"I've never played against them, so that will be special for me," Bardsley says, warming to his theme. "It'll be interesting to come up against Thierry Henry if he does his thing of drifting out to the left wing." From the parks to the Premiership, the adventure continues.