Villa start the new Premier League season against Newcastle United at home on August 16, and so preparations will be geared towards being at our peak condition for that encounter.
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With some of the players returning for the start of pre-season training on Monday, [Villa also confirmed two more friendlies](https://www.avfc.co.uk/news/2025/july/07/Villa-announce-Marseille-and-Villarreal-friendlies/) as we’ll face Marseille and Villarreal on August 9 and August 10 respectively.
Given the quick turnaround between the two games, the expectation is that Emery will split the squad and ensure that every player gets a decent run-out ahead of our first league outing, but it will be interesting to see how it all works logistically from the coaches perspective and who will ultimately emerge as the most likely to start against Newcastle.
That’s eight pre-season games in total, as Villa will face Walsall, Hansa Rostock, Eintracht Frankfurt, St Louis City, Nashville, Roma, Marseille and Villarreal over the course of mid-July to mid-August, and that does look as though we’ve struck a great balance in terms of building ourselves up towards top conditioning with some tougher tests to wrap up our preparations.
With minimal activity in the transfer window thus far, it will also be fascinating to see when any new recruits join up with the squad to strengthen the group, as ideally we’ll get them integrated and start their adaptation process sooner rather than later to give them as much time as possible to acclimatise.
Furthermore, with speculation still linking a number of individuals with a departure from Villa this summer, time will tell who will still be at the club when our pre-season schedule concludes, with some decisions perhaps likely to be made prior to us heading out to the USA.
Villa’s full pre-season schedule for 2025 is below, with not long to wait until we take on Walsall at the Bescot Stadium to kick things off.
**July 16: Walsall (A)**
**July 19: Hansa Rostock (A)**
**🇺🇸 USA tour:**
**July 26: Eintracht Frankfurt**
**July 30: St. Louis City SC**
**August 2: Nashville SC**
**August 6: Roma (Bescot)**
**Aug 9: Marseille (A)**
**Aug 10: Villarreal (A)**
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