5:08
Aston Villa pair Tyrone Mings and Jack Grealish take a look at some of the defining pictures of their lives and careers
Ahead of Aston Villa’s clash against Manchester City, live on Renault Super Sunday, Tyrone Mings and Jack Grealish sat down with Sky Sports’ Patrick Davison to take a look at some of the defining pictures of their lives and careers…
- Live on Sky: Aston Villa vs Man City
- Grealish showing his class
‘Merson was my favourite player’
Grealish: “That’s me and my cousin Sean, who actually had trials here as well, he was a year older than me. That’s obviously Paul Merson in the middle and it’s what we get nowadays, people waiting outside the training ground for photos.
“When I was a kid, I used to love Villa as everyone knows, and Merson was my favourite player at the time. He was the favourite for a lot of Villa fans and everyone knew how good he was. We came to the training ground and got a picture with everyone, but this was my favourite at the time.
“I was young there, I must have been about five maybe. I was playing and loved football, I was an Aston Villa fan and had a season ticket, but I don’t think I was in the academy (Grealish signed for Villa when he was six). When you’re young, you have a favourite player, who most of the time is probably the best player, and Merson was well known and an unbelievable footballer.
“That was the picture I ended up in with him. I don’t know what my Mum was doing though dressing me in that coat with that hair!”
‘It’s our WhatsApp display picture!’
Grealish: “Do you know what’s so good about this photo? We have a WhatsApp group chat with a load of the lads in and this is the display picture. The group chat is actually called ‘Ty’s mortgages’.”
Mings: “I don’t know what I’m thinking. I’ve got a pen in my hand, no one is on the phone – it must have been my Bebo or Facebook picture or something.
“When I was in finance, I had to take a financial adviser exam to start the mortgage adviser role, then I studied that. I wanted to move into hedge funds and other areas of investment banking, that was what I wanted to get in to, so mortgage advising was just an entry into finance. At the time, they were my goals and dreams.
“When I was at Yate and Chippenham, I went to Eastleigh on trial, I went to Hereford when Martin Foyle was manager and they were under a transfer embargo and couldn’t sign me. A month later, I went to Ipswich quite randomly.”
Grealish: “Did you deep down believe you could be a footballer?”
A Villa vs Man City
January 12, 2020, 4:00pm
Live on
Get Sky Sports Get a Sky Sports pass
Mings: “When I was 15 or 16, of course I thought that, but I got released from Southampton and I kind of knew it was coming because me and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain used to be the only two from the U16s that used to have to play for the U15s because we weren’t big enough. The writing was on the wall.
“I must have gone to 10 different clubs when I left Southampton. I eventually went back to school to see what happened and went into non-league. I hoped something would come from it or I’d get into the conference to work my way up through the leagues but the Ipswich thing was kind of crazy. It was the right place, right time and probably the right manager as well because I clicked with Mick McCarthy as soon as he saw me play and he wanted to sign me.
- Premier League: Could Aston Villa go down?
- Charlie’s Premier League predictions
“I remember being at Ipswich and him taking me off, and I was fuming. But he said ‘I want to sign you’ so I sat on the bench thinking ‘oh… what does he mean by that?’ It was December and I was wondering if you had to wait for the January transfer window, but then I thought ‘of course you don’t have to wait for the January transfer window, you play for Chippenham!’
“He took me to his office and asked me what I did and who I was, he had never met me or even invited me in. I told him I worked as a mortgage adviser, and he said ‘can you get out of it?’. I said of course, and I went in the next day and quit.
“My last game for Chippenham was against Stourbridge, and the following Saturday, I was in the squad at Elland Road for Ipswich.”
‘I’d already played for Yate in the FA Cup’
Mings: “That was when I signed for Ipswich. On Monday, I had the trial and in the evening, I went back to Chippenham. Tuesday, I went into work and quit; Wednesday, I went back up to Ipswich and this was on the Thursday, but I didn’t sign until after the training session. I trained with the first team and I was absolutely cacking my pants because I hadn’t signed and was hoping it would go well.
“I signed an 18-month contract and I think it was actually less money than I was earning as a mortgage adviser. I don’t remember what it was, but at the time, I thought ‘come on…’, but I wasn’t in a place to argue. His exact words were ‘if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t, it’s not a big risk for us’.
2:59 FREE TO WATCH: Highlights from Aston Villa’s win over Burnley in the Premier League
“I made my debut at the end of that season against Burnley, but I was supposed to make my debut against Villa in the FA Cup which was maybe a month after that picture was taken. We did team shape and he put me in the line-up at left-back – this was when Villa were in the Premier League so I was like ‘wow’.
“Then I had to go and tell him after training that I’d played in the FA Cup back in August for Yate against Winchester so I had to wait until the last game of the season, when they were safe, against Burnley.”
‘The best thing I’ve done in my career’
Grealish: “It was probably one of the best years of my life [on loan at Notts County], I loved it. If people ever ask what advice I’d ever give to a young player who is maybe in the U17s, U18s or U19s, I’d say, if you can and you have the choice, go out on loan and play games because it was one of the best things I ever did.
- Find out more about Sky Sports
- How to watch Premier League highlights
“But it wasn’t even my choice to be honest. I had a little falling out with the manager here at the time, Paul Lambert – who I have the utmost respect for by the way, he was very good for me – but I fell out with him and I don’t think he wanted me around, so he told me I was going out on loan.
“Notts County were bottom of League One at the time, so he sent me there. But I didn’t look back, I played 37 games and we ended up staying up on the last day of the season. It was honestly the best thing I’ve ever done and the best move of my career really.”
‘England call-up took me by surprise’
Mings: “It was obviously a very proud day for me, I think I’m pointing at my family there who were in the crowd somewhere. It’s a day that, when you look at the pictures from the start of this, it seems like a world away.
“Even this time last year, in the first three weeks of January at Bournemouth, I was training with the U23s and couldn’t get anywhere near the team so to think of everything that’s happened in the past year and to cap it off with England was unbelievable. It’s something I’m sure he (Grealish) isn’t far away from. It was an unbelievable day for my family and more so for me because when you play football, it comes with the territory that you have highs and lows, but for them and the work they put in, they were extremely proud.
- ‘Grealish will deliver England fireworks’
- Which PL clubs will be relegated?
“It was well documented what happened (racist chanting from some sections of the Bulgaria fans), but when I look at that picture, I think of England vs Bulgaria and my England debut, I don’t think about racism. It wasn’t overshadowed for me and I don’t think anyone coming away from it linked with England would think it was a negative because the way we handled it and the response we showed to it was important. It highlighted some key issues and there were a lot of positives to take from it. For me, it doesn’t really cross my mind.”
Grealish: “I’m so desperate [to play for England]. All I can do is keep playing well, keep scoring goals, keep getting assists and hopefully we go flying up the table. I always remember when Tyrone got called up, it was the talk of the whole training ground and everyone was so happy for him. He got told when he came in from training and Ty tried to act a bit calm about it but you could see how happy he was.
“He highlighted how much it meant to him and his family and hopefully one day in the near future, I can be with him.”
Mings: “I had to go and sit in the car afterwards. The first two people I called were my parents and I thought it was a conversation to have in private. I had no idea [I would get called up].”
Grealish: “I said to him the week before that I thought he would get called up.”
Mings: “I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. It was one of my goals for the season but if it had come in October, November or March, I still would have been happy, so for it to happen in the first international break, it took me by surprise for sure.”
Follow Aston Villa vs Man City with Sky Sports
Aston Villa vs Manchester City is live on Super Sunday from 4pm; kick-off 4.30pm. Sky Sports customers can watch in-game clips in the live match blog on the Sky Sports website and app. Highlights will also be published on the Sky Sports digital platforms and the Sky Sports Football YouTube channel shortly after the final whistle.
Sourse: skysports.com
