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We’re delighted to welcome former Aston Villa full-back Alan Hutton as our exclusive columnist. Each week he’ll be giving his views on the biggest talking points at Villa Park…
Alan Hutton believes it’s a “hammer blow” for Aston Villa to lose Tyrone Mings to injury.
Mings, 30, was stretchered off half an hour into Villa’s 5-1 defeat at Newcastle United last week with the England defender suffering a “significant knee injury“.
Aston Villa have since confirmed that the centre-back will be forced to undergo surgery, leaving him sidelined for what is expected to be a long time.
Mings is the second Villa player to be struck down by a serious injury at the start of this season with Emi Buendia also being hit with a “significant” knee injury.
It remains to be seen how long both players will be out for and while Hutton is gutted by the news of Mings’ issue, he believes that his former club does have plenty of depth in that area after signing Pau Torres from Villarreal.
“At this moment in time, they’re not in a bad position after bringing in Torres,” Hutton told Villa News.
“When they signed him for the amount of money they did, I was thinking, ‘does he come in and start right away?’. Because I think Mings had gone from strength to strength, he was a real leader at the back even though he lost the captaincy.
“I don’t think they’ll be in a rush [to sign a new centre-back]. Diego Carlos needs to get up to speed, he’s been out for a long time with a bad injury. You can tell in the games he’s come on and played. Even Torres is going to need to get up to speed.
“Defensively, they play such a high line and you need to be in constant communication with one another to ensure that what happened against Newcastle doesn’t happen again.
“It was a difficult afternoon for them. They looked all over the place, especially after Mings went off.
“It’s a real hammer blow [to lose him] but it’s something they’re working on day-to-day to try and solve.”
In other Aston Villa news, a pundit has shared what John McGinn told him about “really bad” news at Villa Park.