Bodymoor Heath Training Ground is Aston Villa Football Club's training ground, located at Bodymoor Heath in the North Warwickshire district of Warwickshire, England. The site was purchased from a farmer by then Aston Villa Chairman Doug Ellis in the early 1970s. The ground is situated near Fazeley, in the Tame Valley, by the side of the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal, a short distance from Drayton Manor Theme Park and Middleton Hall. It lies close to The Belfry Golf Club, Middleton Lakes RSPB reserve and Kingsbury Water Park, just a few hundred metres from the M42 link to Tamworth and Birmingham. Many of the past and present Aston Villa players have taken up residence in the area, one of the more rural parts of the Midlands, enabling them speedy travel to training sessions. The training ground houses both the first-team and the youth academy. The facilities at Bodymoor Heath are also used as the home ground for the academy teams using provided pitches and changing rooms. The Under-23s previously played at Villa Park, although the construction of a 500-seater match complex in 2019 allowed for all of the academy teams to play within the training ground. History The land used for Bodymoor Heath was purchased sometime during the 1970s from a local farmer by then-Chairman Doug Ellis, to replace the previous training facility in Trinity Road, Aston. However, by the late 1990s the facilities had started to look dated, prompting then-Villa manager John Gregory to criticise Ellis, stating that he believed he was "stuck in a time warp", citing the Chairman's reluctance to invest further in the training ground as something of considerable concern. Planning permission had been a significant problem for the club's intention to modernise the training facilities, and it wasn't until November 2005 that Aston Villa announced an £8million redevelopment of Bodymoor Heath. Before the team's 2005-06 Premier League performance, Ellis had revealed that the club had budgeted the plans for achieving 10th-12th place. However, they finished 16th, and as a result the development came to halt, having already been scaled down from its original plans. Once Randy Lerner purchased the club in September 2006, the club announced that work on the redevelopment of Bodymoor Heath would continue but with revisions and upgrades of the original plans resulting in a total cost of redevelopment of £13million. The new training ground, designed by HB Architects, was officially unveiled on