Bowling to pub drinks - How Steven Gerrard instilled a Bodymoor Heath brotherhood at Aston Villa

Emi Buendia's name is currently top of the whiteboard at Bodymoor Heath. The Argenintian has amassed the most points amongst the entire first-team squad from training drills which include five-a-sides and crossbar challenges.

Head coach Steven Gerrard has introduced a new 'It's a Knockout-style' leaderboard at training and the players cannot get enough of it.

"We've got a list of the best trainer," Emi Martinez revealed this week. "So, let's say if you win a small-sided game you get three points. Stevie G loves that.

"We've got Emi Buendia at the top. If he's losing a small-sided game he'll be screaming and tackling like a proper game so we have to say, 'Emi, calm down. We've got a game in a few days!'

"Konsa gives it to him as well. There's a lot of competition in training, man."

The leaderboards and competitive competition to training was cooked up by Gerrard and his assistants - Mick Beale, Gary McAllister and Tom Culshaw - up at Ibrox and sessions went down a storm.

On what they entail, Gerrard told : "It's just to make training competitive as much as we can. We want the intensity to always be at a certain level. When you put something on it with footballers, whether it be something small or big, when they're competing and there's something they can get out of it, you normally get the best out of them.

"We have a leaderboard so, for example, if we have four or five different things going on in training, you can take points from different things.

"We have a leaderboard and little Emi (Buendia) is leading at the moment. He's a little warrior in training. He's training really well and pushing really hard to get back into the team.

"It goes off the amount of sessions you do as well so, if you miss a few sessions, you