Bouma Back For Aston Villa

Dutch international Wilfred Bouma has declared himself fit and ready for action.

He told the official site 'I'm ready for a return to action, so hopefully the manager will pick me on Sunday (v West Ham). I was pleased to come through the game on Tuesday (behind closed doors friendly v Lincoln City), but I'd already trained for ten days. I just needed some good training sessions and a match. The match against Lincoln was OK for all of us. Now hopefully the manager picks me and I can play well.'
'It's unbelievable. I felt better than ever and it was the last training session of the pre-season tour. Every injury comes at a bad moment, but this was really hard to take.'

Ironically Bouma made his debut when Wham thrashed us 4-0 last season but Bouma refuses to dwell!

'I don't look back. I look at what we are trying to do this season instead. We want to continue the results of the previous weeks. We've done well and we want to pick up as many points as possible, as quickly as possible. I think if you look at the first three games, we're playing a little bit differently and that's better for our game. That's why we've done well so far.'

Adding the warning '...it's only the beginning. We are all happy, but we have to continue and work really hard, because otherwise it can all quickly go wrong. West Ham have signed two high profile players, but that's their team. We only think about our team. We have our own new player - Stilian Petrov - and that's more important to us.'

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