Aston Villa forward Wesley has highlighted what he did not “understand” from his time playing for them in the Premier League.
The attacker made a name for himself in Belgium with Club Brugge. He scored 17 goals across all competitions during the 2018/19 campaign.
The Villans were promoted to the Premier League that season via the Championship play-offs.
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Wesley’s form in Belgium tempted Aston Villa to splash out £22m to sign him ahead of the 2019/20 campaign.
He suffered a cruciate knee ligament injury at the start of 2020 and he did not return until April this year.
During the summer, the forward rejoined Club Brugge on a season-long loan deal. As reported by Birmingham Live, he has revealed that he does not understand why teams play on New Year’s Day in England:
“We were with the team in seclusion in a hotel in Burnley. At night I couldn’t sleep because of the constant fireworks being fired. Impossible. I don’t understand why they play football in England on New Year’s Day.”
On his serious knee injury, Wesley went onto reveal that he thought his playing career was over:
“When you can come back after such an injury, you think: now no one can stop me.
“For a long time I thought my career was over.
“That was a really bad injury, at a time when I was better than ever.
“After it happened, I wept every day for 20 days.
“Not from the pain, but because I thought: will that knee ever be okay again?
“I thought I could never return. If you watch the video footage… My right knee goes all the way… inside, you know … All the ligaments were completely tattered. My wife wept then too, because she saw me like this.”
Aston Villa face Leicester City on Sunday. Ahead of that game, Steven Gerrard has praised Brendan Rodgers:
“Brendan is a top coach,” said Gerrard. “He came in at Liverpool at a time when we needed someone like him in terms of a modern coach who was going to take us forward, but also play some attractive football.
“I think the biggest thing was his delivery on the training pitch. You could see quite clearly that he had got a lot of experience and he was a good manager to play for in terms of a personal relationship.
“It would have been very naive from my point of view not to try and learn as much as I can and what I could from Brendan, and I continued to do it even when we never worked together because obviously I came up against him in Scotland and I have seen how well he has done in the Premier League, which is certainly no surprise to me.
“He is one of many managers who I watch closely and, in my position, when you are new and starting out and trying to gain that experience then they are the type of people you try to learn from.
“There is a mutual respect there. He always helped me as a player and I’ll always remember that, but once the whistle goes, we’ll be ready to compete for the points.”
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