Aston Villa journalist Gregg Evans has been discussing Villa midfielder John McGinn and his journey back to match fitness after the Scottish international broke his ankle in action for Villa last season.
This comes after Evans recently made an appearance on The Athletic’s Villa-themed podcast 1874 to reflect on the Birmingham club’s 3-0 win over Fulham at Craven Cottage.
During the episode, Evans had this to say on McGinn and how the midfielder got himself back to full match fitness after recovering from the serious injury he sustained back in December.
He said: “Dean Smith said in his post-match press conference, he said that he thought that they’d got John McGinn back in the pre-season friendly against Man United, so that’s a real positive thing.
“I interviewed McGinn after the West Ham game, the last game of the [2019/20] season and he admitted then he said ‘look, I’ve only been playing at 80% because I’m coming back from these injuries;’ the broken ankle, the shin injury that he had and he was short of match fitness and it’s going to take some time.
“To hear Smith say that he knew that McGinn was close to 100% in pre-season, was really uplifting because definitely what we [saw] of him [against Fulham] was the John McGinn of old.
“He was all over the place, he was playing like it was his last game on this Earth you know, charging up and down.”
McGinn’s ankle injury kept him out of action for a total of 91 days in which he missed 15 games for Dean Smith’s side last season.
The midfielder put in an impressive performance against Fulham earlier in the week that earned himself a match rating of 8.6/10, making him Villa’s second highest-rated player on the night (per WhoScored).
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TIF Thoughts…
It’s fantastic to see McGinn getting back to his best form for Villa against Fulham in which he grabbed himself two assists against Scott Parker’s side.
Hopefully, McGinn can get through the entirety of this season without suffering any injuries so he can try and keep this level of quality up for the Birmingham club from now on.