This signing marks the start of your first full season as head coach here. How important is it that you now have some time over the course of June and into pre-season to implement the changes you want to see across the squad and the club?

“Very important. We’ve used the last six months to analyse the whole playing staff. We’ve tried to implement a style and an identity that as you can see, clearly, is a work in progress. There have been a lot of positives. There have also been some inconsistencies, and there are a lot of areas to work on to get it how we want. We want to use this stage now to recruit extremely well and then take that into a full pre-season with the group. We’re hoping by the back end of pre-season that it looks more like a Steven Gerrard Aston Villa team and that we can be better and stronger going into the new season. I’m extremely excited – I have been for the last six months. I’ve watched everyone really closely, staff members too. We’re going to continue to shape and polish this up so that we’re better prepared for next season.”

You came into the club in November with the team on a bad run and in a precarious position. In the 27 games since, the results would put us ninth in the table. How do you reflect on your first six months at Villa?

“It’s certainly a work in progress. I’ve seen a lot of positive things, we’ve got some fantastic players here and there’s certainly a base to build something special from, I believe. I’m confident we can do that. It’s difficult when you inherit a group of players that have been used to a different style in the middle of a season. Straight away you’ve got to go into the best league in the world, with the best competition and challenges. That’s very testing and challenging but we’ve managed it really well. We’ve managed to steer ourselves away from any mess at the end of the season. We’ve remained in the Premier League and finished 14^th, which is not acceptable and we’re not happy with that at all. Results since we’ve come in the door show that we finished ninth. That’s something to build on, it’s respectable and next season we want to improve on that. Hopefully, during a full campaign, we can push up towards the top half of the league and really put pressure on teams pushing for places in the top half.”

Gerrard on signing Kamara, 21/22 season, building a team and future plans