Yahoo News Tyrone Mings lifts lid on 'lonely' Aston Villa nightmare ahead of return
Tyrone Mings has declared that he 'feels good' as he nears the end of a painstaking journey of recovery following the knee injury he suffered over a year ago. Aston Villa centre half Mings has been unavailable to Unai Emery since the opening day of last season, when he suffered knee ligament damage in a defeat at Newcastle United.
Since then, another opening day game has come and gone this past weekend when the Lions opened their new campaign with a 2-1 victory at West Ham United thanks to Amadou Onana and Jhon Duran. Mings isn't yet ready to return to the match-day squad, having missed out on pre-season, but Emery has already indicated that he could be back in action as soon as next month.
It's not the first long-term injury Mings has suffered in his career, either; he suffered a knee injury on the opening day of Bournemouth's first Premier League campaign back in 2015, six minutes into Mings' top flight debut. He admitted that it can be a lonely place as you watch your teammates in action - and, in Villa's case, thriving - each week while you remain on the sidelines.
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"The biggest thing to get through a long-term injury is that you have to realise is that no-one cares, and the world goes on," Mings said honestly, while featuring in a Second Shot video with England teammate Jordan Pickford and content creator Jeremy Lynch. "I don't mean that in a morbid way, it's just that football moves so quickly.
"When you're injured, you just need to get over the fact that you're not going to play for a long time, someone else is going to play in your position and it doesn't make a difference if they play in your position or not, because until you get back fit...nobody is coming to help you. You just need to do it yourself and when you get back fit, then you can worry about playing.
"It's a lonely time going in for surgeries and stuff, but you learn some key lessons through it. I've had three surgeries on this knee that is currently injured. It feels good. Everybody has experiences that they go through and how you bounce back from that and deal with that plays a big part in the path that you take."
When asked what was the biggest piece of advice he'd received in his career, Mings revealed the change in attitude which was prompted by former Villa defender and then first-team coach John Terry, as he worked with Mings and the other centre halves at the club having returned as a member of staff when Dean Smith was appointed.
"When John Terry was at Villa, he was obviously big for the centre backs, he was massive for the defenders," he added. "I never used to place a huge amount of emphasis on the seriousness of training properly. Of course I tried hard, but the detail he used to go into with the centre backs to prepare you for the weekend was a real good learning curve for me - training everyday and making sure you're physically and mentally prepared."
