Aston Villa’s Emiliano Buendia has allayed concerns amid online rumours regarding an injury suffered by teammate Pau Torres.
The 29-year-old centre-half was seen arriving at Bodymoor Heath on the first day of pre-season training earlier this month, but he hasn’t featured in any images or video published by the club since, which in turn has raised concern over a potential injury issue.
While there has been no comment from the club or any reputable journalists regarding Pau’s current fitness status, rumours began to circulate on Saturday that the Spaniard has suffered a serious knee injury, and that was why he hadn’t yet featured in either of our opening pre-season outings.
READ MORE:
Rogers departs as Villa’s rebuild gathers pace
What we learned from Villa’s 5-0 win over Walsall
Subscribe to Talk Villa+ below for ad-free weekly newsletters, exclusive articles and much more sent directly to you. The TalkVilla podcast is also now available, have a listen, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or YouTube. UTV!
While it’s not to say that Pau has definitely not suffered an injury setback, the rumours were seemingly unfounded in terms of the seriousness of the issue, as Buendia was forced to comment on a since deleted post on Instagram to call out one fan account for spreading potential misinformation.
As seen below, the Villa playmaker questioned the seriousness of the account for publishing the rumour before insisting that they should have the correct information before posting, thus suggesting that claims Pau had sustained an ACL injury were not accurate.
It remains to be seen what the issue actually is, if there is an injury at all, and it’s worth waiting for official word from the club or trusted reporters to determine whether or not the Spanish centre-half will be absent for a prolonged period.
The same should also go for any other player if or when they are absent from a matchday squad in pre-season, as with the likes of Buendia and Alysson missing for our friendly with Porto on Saturday, many immediately began criticising the latter given his injury record since joining us, believing that he had suffered a fresh setback.
Perhaps he has and we’ll see on Tuesday when we face Real Sociedad if he is absent again or not, but there seems to be a lot of rumours flying around online this summer regarding Villa’s transfers and injuries, another example of which was debunked with the Johan Manzambi signing amid our partnership with Visit Rwanda being announced, and this is the latest example of the need to just wait and see what the facts are before fearing the worst.
Emiliano Buendia’s response to an AVFC Statto post claiming that Pau Torres may have an ACL injury:#AVFC pic.twitter.com/sYGDn4xjYb
— 𝐕𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐎 (@AVFCVillano) July 25, 2026