Tyrone Mings: ‘I would like to be fluent in playing piano, to get on to some Beethoven’

An empty Holte End looms large at Villa Park as Tyrone Mings takes a seat in the Corner Flag suite. He is soon discussing Aston Villa’s uplift under Unai Emery, coping with the noise after being stripped of the captaincy in pre-season, the pride of seeing his family celebrate wins, England aspirations and the small matter of hosting Arsenal on Saturday, but life beyond the bubble of a professional footballer has always interested Mings more than most.

It is well documented that he spent Christmas Day feeding the homeless while a youngster at Ipswich and last year he donated to the funeral costs of a Villa supporter and set up a fundraiser for Ghana Lions, a group of Villa fans in Juaben. “On game days, it’s amazing to see the village they live in, how they come together to watch Villa games, the face paint and the dancing in the street,” Mings says. “Getting them over to a game would be a great thing for us to do one day.”

Mings is engaging company over half an hour and perhaps it should come as no surprise that his appetite to broaden his horizons has extended to taking up piano and martial arts; he practises jiujitsu in Sutton Coldfield – his teacher is a Villa supporter – and has piano lessons a few times a month.

“I’m not Tyrone the footballer, I’m Tyrone the beginner at piano,” he says, smiling. “In the world that we live in, there’s a lot of sticking in your comfort zone. People go to work, come home, have some food, go to bed and it becomes a little monotonous. I like to do things that I know nothing about and step into someone else’s world. I’m learning at the top end of football, the elite where it is kind of fine-tuning … I like going in at entry-level and being like: ‘I know nothing, teach me from the start and let’s see where this goes.’”

Tyrone Mings at Aston Villa’s game against Leicester this month. Photograph: Joe Toth/Shutterstock

For now, Adele’s Easy On Me is his go-to song but he has no plans to impress on away trips any time soon. “I need to be really good before I start showing off in public,” he says, laughing. “I would like to be fluent in playing. The reading of the music isn’t necessarily the hard bit, it’s more the basics of playing the piano. I’d like to have a few songs under my belt that I could crack into if called upon. I need to get on to classical. I want to get on to some Beethoven or something.

Villa appear to have struck up a rhythm under Emery despite successive defeats. Long meetings, often containing granular detail, have become a staple under the manager who succeeded Steven Gerrard in November. “Nothing gets missed. One example maybe is if we concede a goal, we’re going all the way back [via video analysis] to where the problem may have arose. It could be a three-minute spell of us winning the ball and losing it again, winning it back and losing it again; getting a throw-in, giving it back to them and them then beating our press. Eventually it is a kind of butterfly effect that ends up in us conceding a goal because we’ve given away three corners on the bounce or we haven’t cleared it properly. It is easy to hold people’s focus in a long meeting when everything you’re saying has a purpose.”

Mings is enjoying a positive season after an ominous start and extended his contract. The centre-back was shorn of the captaincy last summer and was an unused substitute for the opening game, an alarming defeat at Mings’s previous club, Bournemouth. The following week Mings was recalled and he starred in victory against Everton. He knows the question is coming. “It has just added another page in the book, hasn’t it?” he says of the episode. “It didn’t relieve me of a burden, it didn’t free me up to play any better, it didn’t take any pressure off me. When I’m on the pitch, I’m exactly the same player. I’m vocal and I try to help other people – that doesn’t change if I’m captain or not. It didn’t really change anything in terms of my mental state. I just wanted to play and I got left out of the team – that was a bigger thing to deal with than the captaincy. It has definitely added to my journey at Aston Villa rather than taken anything away from it.”

John McGinn, one of Mings’s closest confidants in the squad, was given the armband, while Ashley Young, in his second spell at Villa, is club captain. “He [McGinn] has been here longer than me, Youngy has been here a year longer than everyone – he has been here longer than most of the furniture,” Mings says, laughing. “There was never any awkwardness between John and me. Genuinely, it is no problem to me if the manager chooses a different captain. Because, ultimately if that’s what he thinks is right for the club, then that’s not for me to have any ego about and think: ‘Oh no, I know better’ or ‘I think I’m going to do a better job than John’ because that is really disrespectful.”

Tyrone Mings in action against Manchester United in November. Photograph: James Gill/Getty Images

Mings cites Young, who turns 38 in July, as perhaps the most salient example of how all Villa players are learning and improving under Emery, a four-times Europa League winner, given how he has excelled at right-back. The World Cup winner Emiliano Martínez is adapting to the Spaniard’s wishes to play out from the back. A low-key welcome greeted the Argentina goalkeeper on his return to Villa – “the manager is very no-frills … it was just business as usual” – but his crowning glory is never too far away. “He’s got a big tattoo [of the World Cup trophy] on his leg, so you’re definitely reminded of it,” Mings smiles. “I know he had a few exuberant celebrations but he’s very humble.”

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Villa are yet to finish in the top 10 since returning to the Premier League four years ago but have grand plans under owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens, who hope Emery can, in the longer term, lead them into Europe. Brighton, Brentford and Fulham are among those jostling for those berths this season. “It’s admirable,” Mings says. “I don’t look at any club and think: ‘That should be us.’ You can’t begrudge someone else’s hard work or plan. We’re on our own journey. Teams are doing it to show that it can be done. Hopefully next it will be us. The manager is very much: ‘I’m not expecting this to be perfect in one month, two months, six months, maybe even 12 months but we will get it right and we’ll keep sticking to what we believe.’ When a manager sets out his long-term roadmap it smooths out any bumps along the road.”

Mings, who harbours hopes of returning to the England setup after missing out on Gareth Southgate’s squad for Qatar, is set to return to the starting XI against Arsenal on Saturday after missing last weekend’s defeat at Manchester City with a quad injury. Supporters will be hoping Mings is fit to feature given his form and their record without him; Villa have won only one of the past 12 league matches he has not started.

“When we played them earlier in the season, I actually think it was a tighter game than the scoreline showed [Villa lost 2-1 in August],” Mings says. “They are a fantastic team and we are going to have to be right at it to get a win. But we definitely feel like we can.”