Alejandro Garnacho\u2019s first outing for Aston Villa quickly became a talking point after the winger appeared to aim a subtle message at Chelsea on social media.<\/p>\n
Garnacho featured in Aston Villa\u2019s 3-1 win over the Indonesia All-Stars as Unai Emery\u2019s side opened their preseason schedule. It was his debut for the club, and he used Instagram afterwards to reflect on the occasion with a line many interpreted as a pointed reference to his former team.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst start in three months,\u201d Garnacho wrote on Instagram. \u201cHappy to be enjoying football again, 1% every day. Thanks Indonesia!\u201d<\/p>\n
The post followed a season in which he did not start any of Chelsea\u2019s final five Premier League matches and scored only once in the league, making his departure unsurprising. But it also fit a pattern that has followed the winger through previous moves.<\/p>\n
Garnacho had already left Manchester United after admitting he had started to do “some bad things\u201d towards the end of his time at Old Trafford. He also drew attention in February when, ahead of Chelsea\u2019s Carabao Cup semifinal against Arsenal, he said, \u201cEveryone knows how hard it is to play there. If, for example, Manchester United can beat them there, we can do it perfectly.\u201d Chelsea then lost 1-0, and Garnacho was mocked on social media by United supporters.<\/p>\n
Later, after Chelsea lost 1-0 to Manchester United in the Premier League, Luke Shaw posted a picture of himself knocking Garnacho to the floor. Other United players commented beneath it, adding to the sense that relations had deteriorated.<\/p>\n
Garnacho has often generated headlines when leaving clubs, and this latest message after his Aston Villa debut will only add to that reputation. Yet the bigger issue now is his output on the pitch. United once viewed him as a major talent after his breakthrough in the 2022-23 season, but this stage of his career may depend on whether he can make the right kind of impact in 2026\/27.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Garnacho marked his Aston Villa debut with an Instagram post that many read as a Chelsea dig.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[711,190],"tags":[227],"class_list":["post-18238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aston-villa","category-chelsea","tag-alejandro-garnacho"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}