There may have been trepidation at St George’s Park on Tuesday night when Jack Grealish and the rest of England’s Manchester City contingent rolled into town, perhaps literally, but Tyrone Mings considered their arrival further cause for celebration. In his view, the more serial winners at Gareth Southgate’s disposal the better England’s chances will be of finally lifting trophies of their own.
The Aston Villa defender knows from personal experience what Grealish’s teammates have been through since City completed the treble and the £100m midfielder started on the quadruples in Istanbul. “I’ve bumped into him on holiday,” Mings says.
“I’ve never put myself in the position of where I’ve actually flown out with him but I’ve seen him abroad and many, many times in this country. It’s impressive – if that’s what you’re into.
“It is extremely wild. The only thing he needs to do is do it at the right times and he’s just won the treble so I don’t think anybody can begrudge him going out and letting his hair down – those luscious locks of his now he has taken the hairband out. He’s certainly had a good few days. The manager always talks about your club experiences adding to the group and we have a squad full of serial winners. When you look around the European competitions and domestic competitions and the amount of players that were involved in those, it can only help. And it’s important to be yourself, whatever that looks like. It adds to the game and the dressing room. Authenticity is a tough trait to come across.”
Mings had reason to party when Villa’s season ended with a 2-1 win against Brighton that sealed qualification for the Europa Conference League and the club’s stunning recovery under Unai Emery. He took a different approach to Grealish. “I was in bed by about 11 o’clock with a Ribena,” he says. “It felt like the end of such a long season.”
It was a season that started with Mings having lost his place in the England squad, then the Villa captaincy when the then manager Steven Gerrard gave it to John McGinn, and finally his place in the Villa side when demoted to the bench for the opening-day defeat at Bournemouth. His revival was as impressive as the team’s, and has been recognised with a recall for England’s Euro 2024 qualifiers in Malta on Friday and against North Macedonia at Old Trafford three days later, but the 30‑year‑old admits he was coasting before a turbulent campaign and paid the price.
“I guess it started with being left out of the England squad but that was a whole summer of strange times really. Then sitting on the bench at Bournemouth and thinking: ‘I don’t know how all of this has happened in such a short space of time.’ I genuinely believe every experience happens for a reason and even sitting there last summer thinking that I had fallen a long way from where I was, never did I think this was it or there was no way back.
“I’ve certainly learned from it. Did I need it? Probably. I think there is always a plateau in people’s careers where things are coasting. I had been in every England squad for two and a half years and these things are sent to test you. The most important thing is how you react to them and that is what I take away from what I’ve gone through.
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“It wasn’t taking things for granted but you just sometimes need a kick up the backside, don’t you? And that can come in many different ways. Sometimes you ask for it, sometimes it gets delivered to you.
“It was just a situation where if I look back now and think: ‘Was I really pushing myself everyday to the level where I am right now?’ Honestly, probably not. That was the result of many different things but I certainly wouldn’t change the last 14 months since the last game of last season to where we are now. Because we went through a poor period, I went through a poor period, and now I can sit here and think it’s taught me some very valuable lessons.”