The Aston Villa captaincy debate is an unnecessary pre-season distraction

Aston Villa have changed their captain for the new season and because England is weird about the concept of captaincy, this has caused DRAMA.

Is the story of the issues at Aston Villa relating to the captaincy of Tyrone Mings a big deal or not? The answer to this question is probably, ‘well, yes and no’. Mings signed for Aston Villa on loan from Bournemouth in January 2019, making the move permanent the following July. He signed a contract extension at Villa Park in 2020, and was made the captain in August last year after an interim spell the previous season, during an injury to Jack Grealish.

But now, it would appear that Steven Gerrard has decided he would prefer John McGinn to be the team captain instead for the new season, with Emiliano Martinez as vice-captain and Ashley Young as club captain. Of course, since this story is being reported in the tabloid press, it’s difficult to see how much – if any – rancour this is causing at Villa Park. Shock and horror is their stock in trade, with the Daily Mail headlining in their own inimitable fashion:

‘Ruthless Steven Gerrard STRIPS Tyrone Mings of the Aston Villa captaincy and names John McGinn as his successor… as he insists not having the armband will help the England star ‘focus more on his own game’.’

Of course, we have to wade through a syrup of tabloidese to get to the root of the issue, and the one thing that we can be certain of is that the thoughts and feelings of the players concerned will always be little more than an afterthought in the minds of those publishing these stories. Indeed, if anything, Mings’ comments on social media – a message we can only presume was prompted by others getting angry about it on his behalf – suggest that this is nothing like the disaster for him that it is being painted as by others. The fact that he replied in the way he did offers more than a hint as to why he was offered the armband in the first place.

None of this is any intended slight at McGinn either. He is a fine player who has proven himself to be more than capable of holding his own in the Premier League over the last three years. There had even been talk of a summer move (no formal clairvoyancy qualifications are required to be able to guess that he was linked with Manchester United), though him being given the captaincy would seem to indicate that the likelihood of him leaving – at the very, very least during this transfer window – are now next to zero.

And neither…