James Chester has resumed full training for Aston Villa, but is a bigger fight waiting for him?
Aston Villa go to Arsenal on Sunday but it remains to be seen whether a forgotten player is on the bus going to London.
James Chester returned to first-team training earlier this month after spending the vast majority of 2019 sidelined with a knee problem.
Chester, an £8 million signing in 2016 [The Birmingham Mail], has been immense for Aston Villa down the years.
But after fighting his way back to full training, he now has an even bigger challenge: getting into Dean Smith’s first XI.
Smith signed no fewer than four centre-backs during the summer – Tyrone Mings, Ezri Konsa, Kortney Hause and Bjorn Engels. Engels and Mings have been brilliant on the Villans’ return to the Premier League and it doesn’t look good for the Wales international.
Leaving his injury history aside, he is a 30-year-old player and the truth is that Smith has much younger options at his disposal.
Such are Aston Villa’s centre-back options, Hause, who was brilliant after originally joining on loan from Wolves in January, hasn’t kicked a ball under Smith in the Premier League yet. The same applies to Konsa.
Chester, if he stays fit, might be ahead of Hause given his Premier League experience, but he probably isn’t going to be ahead of Konsa who, at 21, is a big prospect.
That means he isn’t going to be the obvious candidate to go into the first XI if one of Mings or Engels gets injured.
It could be a very long season for Chester, who is over his injury problems for now, but he has another problem on the horizon. It’s a very horrible situation for the former Hull star – who played through injury last season – but if he approaches that fight with the same courage as the one to regain fitness, Engels and Mings aren’t safe.
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