Aston Villa defender Pau Torres

Unai Emery will be desperate for Tyrone Mings Aston Villa return after what 'poor' Pau Torres did

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Published on:

10 Aug 2024, 12:27 pm

So that's a wrap on pre-season for Aston Villa and Unai Emery will have one concern after their 2-0 defeat to Borussia Dortmund.

Only seven days remain until the Premier League returns with the Villans facing a trip to East Lodon to face West Ham.

And their final preparation ended in a 2-0 defeat at Signal Iduna Park to last season's Champions League finalists.

Now, it might only be pre-season, and of course the real judgements will start next week when the top flight kicks resumes.

But Villa boss Emery will already be desperate to have Tyrone Mings back available after a shaky performance from Pau Torres in Germany.

Pau Torres struggles as Aston Villa lose to Borussia Dortmund

The Spanish centre-back gave away the ball in the lead up to Ezri Konsa conceding a penalty for a foul on Karim Adeyemi, from which Emre Can scored, and then made a hash of a clearance before Julian Brandt clipped one over Emi Martinez to double the leader.

In his live blog for the game, Birmingham Mail's Villa correspondent John Townley wrote: "Borussia Dortmund double their lead moments after going ahead. Julian Brandt clips the ball over Emi Martinez from close range after Pau Torres failed to clear his lines. Poor goal to concede."

It was certainly not the most convincing outing from Torres, who in stats provided by SofaScore, finished the match with one error leading to a goal.

Moreover, he lost possession on nine separate occasions, something that Emery will really want to see improve given the importance of Villa's defenders being comfortable on the ball and building from the back.

He was only involved in two ground duels but was successful in only one of them (50%), though four of his six long passes did find their target.

Throw in two clearances, one blocked shot and one interception and there were some decent contributions from Torres but by and large it was a difficult outing for the centre-back.

Mings has been out since sustaining a serious knee injury in the opening game of last season against Newcastle United.