Aston Villa have begun their journey over to the USA for our pre-season tour, and the club have confirmed a number of the players who have travelled over.
It was always going to be an interesting watch to see who boarded the plane from Birmingham on Thursday, as although several key individuals were expected to travel, it was unclear who of those who have been linked with a potential exit this summer would join them Stateside.
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While our pre-season training will continue over the weekend, we face Eintracht Frankfurt in Louisville on Saturday night, St. Louis City next Wednesday night before wrapping up the tour against Nashville SC next Saturday.
It will form a fundamental part of our preparations for the new campaign, and so it’s good to see so many senior players make the trip as they look to build their match fitness and get back to optimal condition.
As per the club’s media gallery, Lucas Digne, Boubacar Kamara, Lamare Bogarde, Yasin Ozcan, Samuel Iling-Junior, Joe Gauci, Matty Cash, Ollie Watkins, Jacob Ramsey, John McGinn, Morgan Rogers, Ezri Konsa, Marco Bizot, Emiliano Martinez, Leon Bailey, Tyrone Mings, Amadou Onana, Ian Maatsen, Donyell Malen, Pau Torres, Emiliano Buendia and Youri Tielemans were among those who were present, with some of our younger stars also likely to have made the trip with them.
Naturally, as noted above, many of those names were obviously going to travel, but for the likes of Digne, Ramsey, Watkins, Martinez, Bailey and Buendia, who have been touted as potential outgoings this summer amid contract talks or otherwise, it’s reassuring to see that they’ve all travelled.
That doesn’t necessarily guarantee that they will still be with us when the Premier League season gets underway next month, but they’ll be heavily involved in Unai Emery’s plans in the upcoming week or so, and with a lack of new signings so far this summer, it could see Villa consolidate and build on what we already have at our disposal.
It promises to be an intriguing run of games as we get a better idea of where we’re at fitness wise and what tweaks Emery is looking to test out ahead of the return of competitive football, while we’ll hopefully see a reinforcement or two join up with the squad.
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