Aston Villa will not pursue Manchester City man this summer as AC Milan step up interest in midfielder

A potential move for Manchester City defender Nathan Ake is a complete ‘non-starter’ for Aston Villa, BirminghamWorld have been told.

The 27-year-old is expected to move away from the Etihad Stadium this summer with a number of Premier League clubs showing interest, however, the claret and blue are not one of them.

Ake has been strongly linked with a move to Chelsea but talk began circulating towards the back end of last week that Villa were set to rival Thomas Tuchel’s men.

With the current number of senior central defenders still on the books at Villa Park, a move for another player in that area seems unlikely at this point.

It was thought that Steven Gerrard was still actively pursuing a left-sided centre-half on top of the addition of Diego Carlos, however, that appears to be no longer the case with the former Liverpool captain happy to proceed with the current crop he has at his disposal.

AC Milan step up pursuit of Douglas Luiz

Elsewhere and AC Milan are stepping up their pursuit of Villa’s Brazilian midfielder Douglas Luiz.

That’s according to transfer insider Ekrem Konur who states the Serie A champions “plans to make a €20 million offer” for the Brazilian.

With a year left on his current deal at Villa Park, Luiz has been the centre of plenty of transfer talk to date and that doesn’t appear to be going away.

The midfielder did however prove that the love for his current team shows no sign of fading when he shared a picture of himself training with the caption ‘Villa’ with a claret love heart aside it.