The Aston Villa Courier
Match19 Aug 2028
Aston Villa make home a hard place to visit
13 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Real improvement from Veljko Milosavljević at Aston Villa
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Veljko Milosavljević is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Tempers go at Aston Villa
Boubacar Kamara was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Player ratings21 Aug 2028
Babis Kostoulas runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 23. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Mateus Fernandes has improved at 24, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 4 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Squad21 Aug 2028
John Stones falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Boardroom21 Aug 2028
Graduation day at Aston Villa
5 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Match19 Aug 2028
Tammy Abraham the difference as Aston Villa beat Newcastle United
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Tammy Abraham. 2‑1 against Newcastle United, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Market21 Aug 2028
Emiliano Buendía wants European nights
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
In brief
- Market Jacob Turner steps up from the Aston Villa academy
- Market Aston Villa promote Anthony Bennett from within
- Market Nathan Foster steps up from the Aston Villa academy