The players know we’re commodities. It’s driven by money
Villa defender Tyrone Mings says stars have been left with little choice over return to play
TYRONE MINGS gets out of his office chair and turns around to face his bookshelves. He picks out a hardback at random. ‘“Relentless: From Good to Great to Unstoppable”, by Tim Grover,’ he says. ‘He’s the trainer who worked with Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. I love that book.’
Mings reaches for another one. ‘Actually,’ he says, ‘the majority of these are business books. This one is probably the best book I’ve ever read. It’s by Ryan Holiday. It’s about stillness, really.’ He holds it up to the camera. It is called “Ego is the Enemy”.’
The Aston Villa centre-half thinks about that book title. He applies it to much of what he does. That includes Premier League footballers’ return to training over the last fortnight and the looming prospect that Villa will be one of the first four teams to resume this fractured season when they meet Sheffield United on June 17.
Some feel unease about football coming back in this country in a little over two weeks from now and others have voiced their misgivings that the battle against coronavirus is still far from over and that this is still all too early but, with Villa back in full contact training and competitive instincts reignited, Mings is at peace with the decision.
The England defender is not blind to the imperatives driving the return. ‘The motives are possibly 100 per cent financially driven rather than integrity driven,’ he says. Few would argue with that. Still, he has thought through the risks to himself, to his family and to others and he is satisfied that he will be in surroundings that are as safe as they can be.
When he thinks about grappling with Sheffield United attackers at a corner, he searches for some wry humour. ‘The last time I played against Billy Sharp,’ he says of the Blades striker, ‘he scored a hat-trick so the virus will be the least of my worries.’
He has made football’s return a simple equation. His club has told him it is time to go back to work and that is what he is doing. He has tried to take the ego out of it.
‘I am all for playing again because we have no other choice,’ he says. ‘As players, we were the last people to be consulted about Project Restart and that is because of where we fall in football’s order of priority. That isn’t a problem. We are commodities in the game and we accept that.
‘We got the option to come back to training and that’s fine because we didn’t have to but if the FA and the EFL and the Government and UEFA and the Premier League all say you are going back to play, it really doesn’t make any difference what the players think because you are going back to play. It is get in or get out.
‘It is important that players are given the choice. It’s a personal thing. If you don’t want to do it, you absolutely don’t have to. People have aired their concerns about families’ health and I back those people 100 per cent. That is something people have to take into consideration really carefully. No one should ever be on the end of personal abuse for making a decision based on their families’ needs or health needs.
‘Project Restart is financially driven. I think everybody accepts that. But that’s fine with me because I look at this monster that is Premier League football and the revenue it creates and I didn’t moan about being a part of it when everything was great so I’m not going to moan now when the atmosphere around the game is more hesitant.
‘It is potentially one of the safest environments and safest industries we could be going into. There are a lot of people in the country who are in a lot worse situations than us. We will be tested regularly but I know that testing isn’t a vaccine. It’s just something to say whether you have got it or not. Putting yourself out there and going to work every day is increasing your risk but the world has to get back on its feet at some point.’ There is relief for Mings and for Villa, too, that the season appears to be on the verge of restarting. Their last match — a 4-0 hammering by Leicester City at the King Power Stadium on March 9 — was the last Premier League game before the shutdown and left Villa marooned in the bottom three, two points adrift of safety.
Villa have a game in hand — against Sheffield United — but as the extent of the coronavirus crisis became evident and there were more and more suggestions the season would not be completed, Villa fans realised that if final positions were to be decided on the points per game system favoured by the Premier League, the game in hand would not be enough to save them from the drop.
Arguments raged between those who favoured voiding the season on grounds of both fairness and safety and those who advocated points per game. Mings, 27, hopes those arguments are irrelevant now and that Villa can replicate the late-season surge that drove them into the Championship play-offs last season and then pushed them into the Premier League.
‘I would be lying if I said it had never crossed my mind that we might be relegated without kicking another ball,’ Mings says. ‘What player wants to be relegated with 10 games left while also having a game in hand? If we win that game in hand, we don’t go down on any points per game variations so it seemed so unfair that that could have been a possibility.
‘I wrote a Tweet some time ago that pointed out that if a player who plays for a team at the top of the league voices any concerns about safety, it is seen as OK. But if someone connected with the bottom six, like Karren Brady at West Ham or Paul Barber at Brighton, does the same, it is deemed as selfish and cynical.
‘Leeds and West Brom fans [whose sides sit in the top two of the Championship] would have a completely different view because they were worried about the season
As players, we were the last to be consulted over football’s resumption
being voided and everyone has to take care of their own personal situation. I have no problem with Leeds fans slaughtering me and saying I am selfish.
‘I have no problem with Liverpool fans trying to push the season through because they are on the cusp of one of the greatest achievements of recent years. Everybody is fighting their own corner. Football is based on opinions, whether there are games on or not.’
Mings has kept himself in shape during lockdown. As well as reading and keeping up with current affairs, he goes out on his mountain bike with his Rottweiler, Pablo, in tow. ‘Pablo has appreciated the recent relaxing of the rules on exercise,’ Mings says. ‘He likes to get out at least twice a day.’ Mings has a gym in his home in the Birmingham suburbs and is confident he will be fit and ready when the season restarts.
‘Maybe the break will have helped us as a club,’ he says. ‘We’ll only know that at the end of the season. We’ll hopefully have John
McGinn back from injury by the time football returns but other teams will have key players back as well. Having no crowds and the home and away advantage taken away may work to our advantage. There are a lot of players who, when pressure starts getting on top, don’t like it and don’t like to be in those situations.
‘If we are talking about five or six teams having nothing to play for, hopefully that takes the edge off their motivation by five or 10 per cent and that could be the best chance we have of getting a result or causing an upset rather than if those players felt like they needed to impress their fans.
‘We have a mini-season now and we have to try to channel some of the belief and momentum that we had this time last year when we made it into the play-offs. I think you will probably find a few teams have a completely different run of results than they did in the first two thirds of the season. Hopefully, we’ll be one of those. I don’t think it is asking too much of players to put their whole life and soul into a six or seven-week period. It is like a boxer’s fight camp.’
Mings has become a fan favourite at Villa Park since his arrival from Bournemouth on loan in January 2019, a deal that was made permanent last summer.
If a few footballers have struggled to cope with the prescriptions of the pandemic, Mings has been able to channel his energies into continuing to be an advocate for those suffering with mental health issues.
Last week, he appeared with Frank Lampard, Joe Hart and Marvin Sordell in the inspiring BBC documentary ‘Football, Prince William and Our Mental Health’. He talked about football’s attitude to the issue and how he had been paying a psychologist for regular therapy sessions during lockdown. ‘Especially in elite sport, it is so unforgiving,’ says Mings. ‘It is so mentally fragile if you place your significance or happiness in the eyes of fans or if you give them the responsibility to make you feel good. You go from hero to zero so many times in a game let alone week to week and month to month.’
He has helped as best he can in other ways, too. Individuals at every club have been affected by the pandemic — Ron Smith, the father of Villa boss Dean Smith, died last week after contracting the virus — and Mings has taken part in initiatives to phone key workers such as school teachers and NHS front line staff to thank them for what they are doing.
When he was a child, Mings and his family spent several months living in a homeless shelter. He has not forgotten what that was like. He has made sure not to leave his social conscience at the dressing-room door now he is part of the elite of the Premier League.
He has made his private box at Villa Park available to a charity, he has started his own football academy in Birmingham and he spent one Christmas Day serving food to the homeless. When he was at Ipswich Town and changed his shirt number, he bought new shirts for fans who had paid for tops with the old number on the back.
He knows how much work other players do in similar areas, and so he was surprised when, at an early stage of the Government’s response to the crisis, Health Secretary Matt Hancock singled out players and said: ‘The first thing that Premier League footballers can do is make a contribution, take a pay cut and play their part.’
‘I didn’t anticipate that,’ says Mings. ‘He was asked a question about footballers, which is just as bizarre. We were getting to the peak of the pandemic and it seemed like a strange time to start pointing fingers. Why wasn’t he highlighting any of the great work Marcus Rashford had done feeding kids through charity?
‘We absolutely should be doing our part throughout this not just as footballers but as human beings and anybody who feels like they can help throughout this period has. People were doing that before this. We were always planning on doing something as players anyway. The Players Together initiative was one thing.
‘There are a lot of things Matt Hancock doesn’t know about the profession and what players do but it wasn’t something I lost a lot of sleep over. I took it with a pinch of salt. He felt the players should be doing more. Maybe some players felt the Government should be doing more. It wasn’t a time to be concerned about who is doing the most or being seen to be doing the most.
‘I’m not perfect. I know that. But because I have seen the other side of the fence, it does allow me to be authentic when I am talking to fans. There are a lot of different shoes I can put on and say, “I have been in your situation and I want to try and help.”
‘I think I would be wasting my platform if I didn’t try to give back. My responsibilities off the pitch are just as important as they are on it.’
He is focused now on June 17 and the game against Chris Wilder’s side, who are chasing a place in the top four. Some things will be the same when football returns but Mings knows some things will have changed, too. To adapt ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things’, another of the books on his shelves, there will be no easy answers in the world football emerges into.
‘Once it was a bad injury or age that wiped out a player’s career,’ he says. ‘This has made us realise that all the dreams we have could be even more fragile than they already were.’