Tyrone Mings probably guessed that this was coming. Back in May, Steven Gerrard made no secret of his summer ambitions: “I think we need to improve the spine of the team. You can never stop working with your players, trying to improve them. But sometimes individual errors are on the individuals.” Eight days later, Villa reached an agreement to sign central defender Diego Carlos for £26m.
Still, it has been a rough few months. First Mings was dropped from the England squad, tweeting his well wishes to those selected ahead of him. Then he lost the Aston Villa captaincy after a single season, publicly stating that he would be proud to play under John McGinn’s stewardship. Then he lost his place in the first team – Carlos and Ezri Konsa started against Bournemouth on the opening day.
None of this is easy. Being dropped – and even losing the captaincy – are pitfalls that plenty of footballers face, but you can never be prepared for the instant blow to your confidence. Everything becomes a few percentage points harder because you have had it made acutely aware that what you considered to be your best – at least in terms of effort – is no longer considered to be good enough.
So Mings could probably have done without his manager, deliberately or inadvertently, calling him out in public on Saturday. Gerrard told reporters that Mings needed to “’look me in the eye and show that he’s ready to play”. It’s one thing singling out players after a bad performance (although it is often counter-productive), but another entirely when you have just lost in desperate circumstances and that player wasn’t even involved because you left him out.
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Gerrard is paid to make these decisions; this isn’t a popularity contest. If he believes that Carlos and Ezri Konsa are his best central defender combination, he is right to plough on with that strategy. It’s hardly unthinkable that Mings comes back into the team and flourishes again – if nothing else he appears to be an uber-dedicated professional.
But the suspicion among some supporters is that Mings has simply become the poster boy of Gerrard’s policy of solving issues with new signings. Gerrard’s repeated mantra has been the need for greater “quality”. But that is a vague term. Quality can be achieved through recruitment, no doubt.
It can also be achieved, as Gerrard noted in May, by improving what you have through coaching, tactical plans, opposition analysis and man management. Almost every player that Gerrard inherited had demonstrated their ability before, either at Villa or elsewhere. Does that not suggest that they have quality?
And none more so than Mings. He is hugely popular amongst Villa fans because of his performances in the promotion season (when on loan at the club) and his work in helping consolidate them in the top flight. In 2020-21, Villa had the third best defence outside the top four and Mings started 36 league games (Villa conceded four in the two he didn’t start). If his form has tailed off, perhaps that’s as much about the system as the individual. Gerrard telling the media that Mings needs to look him in the eye places all the blame on Mings.
Tyrone Mings Is good enough for Aston Villa, in my opinion he ticks all the right boxes, so how do you lose the Armband and your place in seconds . You don’t, so who said what to who, No one cares get him in the team. Respect.
— Paul McGrath (@Paulmcgrath5) August 9, 2022. UTV.
A PR battle has formed. On Tuesday morning, Paul McGrath, the club’s greatest defender and arguably greatest player, publicly offered Mings his support. The replies to McGrath were almost universally in support of Mings. He has generated more loyalty than the manager who has been there nine months and been given eight new players in that time.
That makes this both a micro and macro issue for Gerrard. The micro issues: Mings is popular, Mings has been successful at this club supposedly in a team with less quality, you’ve potentially crushed the spirit of an important player, results without him have typically been poor, supporters are unhappy at his treatment. The macro issue: is it really a good idea to create a PR fight with one of your players when there is already growing pressure to show you merit the cavalcade of new signings?
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