Aston Villa not likely to visit Sweden this summer

It looks as though Aston Villa will not be visiting Sweden for the fourth consecutive summer later this year for pre season training opting instead for Germany.

Manager David O'Leary told the official web site this morning "I just think the lads have had enough of the Swedish thing. I think there's no point in some of the games over there.

"What I'm looking for is to extend the players' fitness. The matches themselves are an extension of training and some of those Swedish games have been almost like a day off.

Personally I like Sweden as an option and the matches are what you make of them. If you pick poor teams you'll get poor matches. If you want to extend the fitness of the players you can do that in Birmingham or by a more rigorous training programme.

I only say this because we don't need to hear excuses from O'Leary all we need to hear is that the team are going somewhere else - it is nice that they communicate but sometimes it's as if they are communicating for the sake of communicating.

Germany would be a good option also but they will have to be careful to pick the right teams and if they get to Germany early enough you never know David O'Leary might get to see the World Cup final he's been talking off so much.