Legendary footballer and ambitious coach Steven Gerrard is getting ready for his first full season in charge of Aston Villa, knowing he’ll need a solid start to improve on the Villans’ 2021/22 record. The 42-year-old took his team to the other side of the world, to Australia, to find the right form.##NAJAVA_MECA_6505557##Aston Villa’s squad arrived in Gold Coast near Brisbane on the east coast of Australia for training and three friendlies over the next nine days. While the prospect of training matches versus Leeds United, Brisbane Roar and Manchester United interests local football fans the most, Stevie G is happy just to use every minute available for training.”The priorities are that we’re here to work and to prepare for the season, but the most important thing for me is the training time. We’ve got wonderful facilities here to rehearse and work. We want to be operating in the top half of the Premier League, for sure, and we want stronger runs in the cup competitions. The first task was to stay away from relegation. We did that well, but we suffered some inconsistencies as well.”This is a good time for the coach to get to know his new players ahead of the big kick-off. And you can tell that Gerrard is impressed with recent recruit Boubacar Kamara.”He’s shown his quality. We’ve only had two or three sessions from a football point of view, but straight away, you can see he’s got a really impressive football IQ. You can see he knows the game. He has an impressive game understanding. Technically, he’s a wonderful passer of a ball. I’m very confident that he’ll settle well and be a real good player for us in time.”📹 Steven Gerrard interview in Australia with @10NewsFirst #avfc | #utv | #vtid pic.twitter.com/QAYMI9alDB— Aston Villa Statto (@AVFCStatto) July 13, 2022 Gerrard has often spoken about wanting to circle himself with players who are obsessed with winning. He wants natural-born winners to make up his squad.”Whether you’re playing a game in training, whether you’re playing a friendly match, whether you’re playing a significant game, it should be in your DNA that you want to win. That’s what football’s about, and we’ll be going into the weekend trying to win the game.”
