Douglas Luiz Aston Villa
Steven Gerrard admits he’s shelved any new contract discussions surrounding Douglas Luiz despite the Brazilian set to enter the final 12 months of his current Aston Villa deal. The former Man City midfielder has been a mainstay in Gerrard’s Villa line-up, starting the last 17 matches.
Steven Gerrard said: “He’s got 12 months left. That’s where we’re at. We haven’t analysed that individual’s situation in isolation, if you like. He’s a very good player who’s been playing the majority of the games. He’s a player we rate very much. All of the individuals, we’ll speak about from now until the end of the season and we’ll deal with each case when needs be but not right now. The priority is obviously Wolves.”
Douglas was linked with a move to both Roma and Arsenal last summer while, in January, it was reported that Villa turned down an approach for the Olympic gold medal winner from Mikel Arteta’s Gunners.
Steven Gerrard added: “We want to keep all of our good players at the club. For us, to take this where we want to take it, where the ambitions are, we want all of our remaining players to stay but, at the same time, we’ve got to respect that everyone’s different i.e. Phil’s on loan, i.e. Dougie’s got a year left, i.e. one or two might be close to signing new deals. We’ll just analyse each case as and when needs be. That’s not the case now with nine games to go with Dougie.”
Elsewhere, Gerrard had this message for supporters on what to expect when the transfer window reopens on June 10 ahead of the manager’s first full season in charge at Villa Park.
Steven Gerrard said: “The message to supporters is the plan is to try and finish as strong as we can to put ourselves in a satisfactory position to go and build on. The message from me, from a personal point of view, is I’ll do everything we can to try and make the group as strong as we can and really attack next season with a lot of positivity off the back of a really strong pre-season. That’s what I want. I want it to be the last day of pre-season and we’ve shaped the squad in a way in which we can really attack and really be positive in 2022/23.”
