John McGinn is no Aston Villa joke as Micah Richards has last laugh now Scotland star is in title fight

Micah Richards knew John McGinn was the real deal after his first Aston Villa training session.

Questions were asked whether McGinn could cut it at a higher level after his £3.75million move from Hibs - a fee Celtic were unprepared to match so the midfielder made the move to Birmingham with Villa then in the Championship. Since then he's gone from strength to strength, leading them to promotion with a goal in the playoff final, Europe, and now an English Premier League title race after McGinn's goal sunk Arsenal at the weekend.

Of course, he's long been a talisman for his country, often coming up with big goals in big games and will head to Euro 2024 as arguably Scotland's star man. If he continues his form under Unai Emery then bigger fish will almost certainly be circling. Previous links to Manchester United and Liverpool came to nothing, but now Richards reckons there's no need for McGinn to move on as long as Villa are challenging. And he was always convinced that his former teammate would hit these heights.

"I was at Aston Villa and we had (Jack) Grealish," Richards told The Rest Is Football podcast. "He was the main man and the one who made things tick. He was the flair player and the golden boy.

"But McGinn did all the hard work and had a great left foot. He's super strong - people don't understand how strong he is. When he bursts through and you try and get the ball off him, he gets his big arse in there and has a great stance where he just says: 'get off me.'

"He's got great acceleration, the right passing and a lot of people laughed when he came down from Scotland. Asking if he can mix it in the Premier League? After the first training session I was like, wow!

"He could shoot, he could tackle, he was good in