Aston Villa journalist Gregg Evans has made a big claim concerning Villa U23s midfielder Carney Chukwuemeka.
This comes after Evans recently made an appearance on The Athletic’s Villa-themed podcast 1874 where he spoke about a number of topics concerning the Birmingham club.
On the subject of Villa’s academy and which players could look to break into Dean Smith’s senior side at some point in the future, Evans had this to say about Chukwuemeka in particular. (24.23)
He said: “[Chukwuemeka] is the one that everybody’s talking about, he’s the real player.
“They expect him to really kick on, he’s the real deal. It could even be a case of he’s a player that doesn’t have even a loan spell and just gets gradually put into the first team.
“Look, he’s very young, he’s 17-years-old, but he’s developing very nicely and he’s somebody that we could start to get really excited about.”
Chukwuemeka joined Villa’s youth system back in 2016 from Northampton Town’s youth team. Since then, the 17-year-old has worked his way to Villa’s U23s side.
Despite not having made an appearance for Smith’s first team yet, the midfielder has made 19 appearances for the U18s in which he has managed to score two goals and provide six assists.
For the U23s, Chukwuemeka has made 17 appearances and scored one goal and provided two assists (per Transfermarkt).
TIF Thoughts on Gregg Evans’ comments on Chukwuemeka…
With it being reported earlier this month that European clubs Bayern Munich and Juventus were supposedly interested in signing the teenager, this shows just how highly thought of he is.
Moving forward, it will be interesting to see whether or not Smith decides to give Chukwuemeka his senior debut for Villa at some point during the remainder of this season.
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However, with Villa currently having Douglas Luiz, John McGinn, Marvelous Nakamba, Morgan Sanson, Ross Barkley and Jacob Ramsey in their squad that play in midfield, Chukwuemeka will have to work hard if he wants to play ahead of any of these current players.