Styling Inline Page Links

Hi peeps, at my wits end tried searching for this everyone but I think i’m maybe going about this in the wrong way, but hey.

I’m trying to style up the wp_list_pages “a” link using inline styling so that the page/ article ul li a background image can be pulled in dynamically from a custom field in a page.. the css then controls it’s roll over state moving the background a certain amouht of pixels etc.

I’ve found a way of hard coding an bg image in but i need to be dynamic etc.

I’m having an issue get the var $bg_img to echo out into the string style. see below

<?php
				$my_pages =  wp_list_pages('echo=0&exclude=3,5,10,12,22,24&title_li=');
				$var1 = '<a';
				$bgimg = bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/client_client_corner.gif';
				$var2 = '<a  style="background-image:url('.$bgimg.')"';
				$var3 = '</a';
				$var4 = '</a';
				$my_pages = str_replace($var1, $var2, $my_pages);
				$my_pages = str_replace($var3, $var4, $my_pages);
				echo $my_pages;
		   ?>

Any ideas?

Andy.