Aston Villa defender Ezri Konsa has indicated that he will be reporting back for pre-season training with the club imminently.
The 26-year-old was given an extended break after being part of the England squad that reached the EURO 2024 final earlier this summer, along with Ollie Watkins, while Emiliano Martinez has yet to resume training after lifting the Copa America with Argentina.
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While it’s a shame that they haven’t had this crucial period with the rest of the squad to prepare for the upcoming campaign, they’ve certainly deserved their rest, but it looks as though we can expect Konsa back in the near future at least.
As seen in his update below posted on Instagram, the Villa centre-half is back working out on an individual basis, and coupled with the hourglass emoji, it appears as though he’ll be back with the club fairly soon.
Having not been named in the squad for our pre-season tour in the USA, the expectation is perhaps that Konsa will rejoin the group when they return from the US and head back to Bodymoor Heath for further training.
The third and final game of our tour comes against Club America on Saturday night, and so the hope is that we’ll see Konsa, Watkins and Martinez all back with their teammates early next week as they step up their work ahead of our Premier League season opener against West Ham Utd on August 17.
Importantly, Villa do still have two pre-season friendlies remaining after the USA tour, and so Konsa will look to feature against both Athletic Bilbao and Borussia Dortmund in order to reach peak fitness and get his match sharpness back to where it needs to be in order to be at his best for our trip to London next month.
Both Martinez and Watkins will likely join him around the same time, albeit neither have dropped a similar hint as of yet, and so barring Tyrone Mings and Boubacar Kamara, that will hopefully move us closer to having a fully-fit squad available to Emery for the start of another big year for the club.
While Kamara is expected to miss the first couple of months of the new season due to injury after suffering his setback in February, it’s hoped that Mings is at least able to rejoin group training in the coming weeks to step up his recovery, as he’ll no doubt be desperate to get back on the pitch and play his part in this campaign and prove that he’s still capable of being a key figure for us.
⏳🔜 Ezri Konsa on Instagram…#avfc #UTV 🟣🔵 pic.twitter.com/Knqwu1rMMk
— Talk Villa (@thetalkvilla) July 30, 2024