Aston Villa legend Paul McGrath admits he would never have moved to England if Manchester United had not come calling.

McGrath also revealed it was his constant injury problems that led him his drinking problems.

"And I was happy in Ireland. Playing football part-time and working. Honestly, if it hadn't been Manchester United, I'm not sure I would have bothered. It had to be something special to drag me away," McGrath told the Daily Mail.

"When I first arrived, I saw the likes of Bryan Robson and Gordon McQueen floating around the place. You'd bump into John Gidman and Norman Whiteside. I'd just seen them on television.

"The next thing I know, I'm in the side and I just used to be able to drink. But I wasn't in the First Division of drinkers back then. No way. I was fit, young and able to train.

"The problem was that myself and Norman Whiteside would be injured for such a length of time. We'd be in the gym or in the treatment room watching the other lads play and for us it was a case of, 'What shall we be doing this afternoon?' Obviously, we could have been laid up in bed recuperating. But we would sort of look at each other and the conversation would develop along the lines of, 'No, we can't. We can't. We can't, can we? Ah, go on. Let's go for one or two." Eventually, we would be sat there all afternoon, drinking. We had serious injuries together at the same time which compounded the problems.

"But we are talking about a different era here. I'm not making excuses. It's a bit late for that now. But there was an unofficial league table of which drinkers were the best.

"We met up with the Everton boys, the Liverpool lads, Nottingham Forest... you'd have a laugh with them, it was a lot more relaxed. By the time I finished in 1997 it was a case of, 'Jeez, I'm going to have to be half-right if I want this to continue'. People were stepping away from it.

"We had the mentality that if you win a game then you would go out. The food was changing, they were bringing in psychologists. Not that it would have done much good with me.

"They could have locked me in a room with six or seven of them and, no doubt about it, they'd all have left first. I'd have screwed the lot of them up."