The Aston Villa Peace Cup Squad has been announced:-

Brad Friedel, Brad Guzan, Elliot Parish, Marc Albrighton, Barry Bannan, John Carew, Ciaran Clark, Carlos Cuellar, Curtis Davies, Marlon Harewood, Chris Herd, Emile Heskey, Zat Knight, Eric Lichaj, Shane Lowry, Isaiah Osbourne, Stiliyan Petrov, Nigel Reo-Coker, Moustapha Salifou, Nicky Shorey, Steve Sidwell, Ashley Young, Luke Young, Jonathan Hogg, Wilfred Bouma, Andreas Weimann.

The England Under-21 trio – Agbonlahor, Milner & Gardner – are not included.  I thought I saw MON saying recently that those three would be reporting back on Friday, so I was interested to see whether they’d be included in the Peace Cup.

I hope they do travel, at least to train with the rest of the squad, or what are they going to be doing at Bodymoor??  If the team win their group, they won’t be back in the UK until after 2nd August.

Carew, Heskey, Ash, Guzan & Petrov only reported back on Monday and this competition will be their first chance to get some playing time under their belts.

I’m looking forward to this tournament, I’m curious to see whether MON wants to play 2 or 4 games. I can’t see any reason why we couldn’t win our group comfortably enough to set up the full 4 games. With so many senior players without any playing time yet this pre-season, I hope he wants to give them as much chance as possible. We shall see.

EDIT: Sorry, I had missed this: Gabby, Milner & Gardner will not be traveling to Spain. They’re not reporting back until early next month.