Christian Purslow announces Aston Villa training ground plans

Following the purchase of Villa by Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens, the side have seen marked success on the pitch, with the club gaining promotion in dramatic circumstances under Dean Smith last season.

But with success on the pitch and Premier League football on show at B6 once again - there has also been work undertaken at Bodymoor Heath to further improve facilities at the club.

Countless hours have gone into improving the Aston Villa academy - with the club's youth facility now one of the largest on the continent.

U23 and youth games are now regularly hosted at the training ground, located just outside of Sutton Coldfield - but work has not stopped there.

"I think most of our fans know because of the HS2 project, we were essentially forced to rebuild large chunks of our academy operation - that work is complete." Purslow said, speaking to VillaTV.

"Our facility is now one of the largest in Europe. It's open, it's working, we're hosting U23 and youth games now here at Bodymoor in our wonderful new facility.

"I'm also very pleased to report that our first team HQ is being upgraded hugely with the building of a new performance centre.

"It increases the workspace for the physical preparation of our athletes by a factor of eight.

"It's an absolutely enormous project that broke ground about six weeks ago and we are planning on that to be up and running for our summer pre-season."

Meanwhile, Villa Park itself was treated to a much-needed facelift over the summer.

The North Stand, the oldest at the ground, now boasts a picture of Jack Grealish and Dean Smith celebrating promotion with the play-off trophy, whilst other areas of the stadium and the club store were also noticeably improved over the summer.

Purslow highlighted that work as part of a 'concerted plan' to improve the match day experience for fans attending games - along with the hospitality areas at B6.

"We've done a lot of work." he said.

"I hope the fans noticed when they came back for the new season, we obviously did quite a bit of cosmetic work to get the place looking sharper.

"We did some very significant capital projects inside the ground, mainly focused on increasing and improving the areas for hospitality and we've had tremendous feedback.

"I am so proud of the fact that the stadium is week in, week out sold out in the Premier League, something that hasn't been true for many, many years at Villa Park as our fans old and new, I hope, enjoy the unique atmosphere at Villa Park on match day, no better exemplified than the semi-final when the place was absolutely rocking.

"I've been very struck by visiting teams' officials, all of them commenting post-match on what an incredible place it is to come to, and what a difficult opponent we are playing in a stadium with our phenomenal support.

"It's been a concerted plan to make Villa Park a place where people want to come and enjoy the experience of watching Aston Villa - and part of that is having facilities that are modern, relevant, that work and all of that takes capital and we've been using our capital to do that."