Aston Villa backed to seal transfer reunion with player Steven Gerrard dubbed 'fantastic'
Aston Villa have been tenuously linked with a surprise reunion with midfielder Carney Chukwuemeka this month, after he was granted a move away from Stamford Bridge. The midfielder signed a six-year contract when he left during the tenure of Steven Gerrard two-and-a-half years ago.
Links have emerged suggesting that Chukwuemeka could be of interest to Villa, who sold Douglas Luiz in the summer and brought in Amadou Onana to play in the middle of the park. He has also more recently been linked with loan moves away from London to Glasgow sides Celtic and Rangers.
Chukwuemeka won the FA Youth Cup with Villa in 2021 and was on the periphery of the first team under Dean Smith and then Gerrard. He made 16 first-team appearances for Villa, including three starts, but he left for Chelsea in the summer of 2022 for a fee worth in the region of £20m.
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The young midfielder, who is still only 21, has suffered with injury setbacks since moving to Stamford Bridge, but nevertheless he has made only 32 appearances across two and a half years at the Blues. This year, Chukwuemeka has been limited to minutes in the EFL Cup and the Europa Conference League, such is the competition for places under Enzo Maresca.
Gerrard was a huge fan of Chukwuemeka, who he described as a 'fantastic talent' during his time on the fringes of the Villa squad. Speaking at the time, after he was involved in a narrow to defeat to Manchester City, Gerrard said: “I think we just need to let the kid play football, let him evolve, let him grow.
“I think we’ve shown what we think of the kid (on Wednesday night), shown our belief and confidence in him at this level of game. “You can see the profile and talent but my job an the staff’s job is to put everything around that talent to get better and grow and get a better game understanding.
“We believe this is the right place for him and if anyone else thinks it’s not I’d like to sit in front of them and discuss that because he’s a local lad and he’s enjoying it. He’s enjoyed the last two weeks – I spoke to him face-to-face and we’ve told him that if he keeps performing he’ll be very much part of the first team set-up so I don’t foresee a problem and I certainly don’t want a problem to brew in the background. And, for me, I don’t think it will.”
"The reason we put him on is because we believe in him and we trust him. He’s a fantastic talent and there’s still a lot of growth and evolving for him to do and it’s important that we give him that support and we give him the environment to keep evolving in, but you can see his profile, you can see his quality – it didn’t faze him when he came on.
"I know he’ll think about that chance all night long because I’ve been there myself but he’ll score many goals for Aston Villa, he’ll create many goals because he’s that type of talent. I think we showed out trust and our belief in him by calling upon him because it was a big substitution but we believed he would get that opportunity.”
Austria born Chukwuemeka, who signed for Villa in 2016 from Northampton Town - and was eventually joined at Villa by his brother Caleb - has represented England at every age level from under 17 to under 20.
