ALEX McLeish has described Villa and the Cleveland Browns as one big “family” after giving a positive report of last week’s transatlantic trip.

McLeish and his coaching staff flew to the States to share best practice tips with counterparts from Randy Lerner’s American football club.

And Villa are set to return the favour by inviting representatives of the NFL franchise over to Bodymoor Heath at some stage in the future.

“It was a good trip,” said McLeish. “It was informative. We asked to do it, we’d spoken about it a while ago.

“We actually thought it would probably be during an international break, that was what we targeted, but going out of the FA Cup gave us that break last week.

“It’s something Randy is looking for his staff and his managers to do anyway, since the day he took over the club.

“But we asked if we could go and Randy and Paul Faulkner were delighted that we wanted to see what, and how, the Browns were doing.

“We hope that with the ongoing relationship, they’ll be like family.”

McLeish travelled with assistant Peter Grant, chief medical officer Dr Ian McGuinness, fitness coach Adrian Lamb and performance analyst Patrick Riley.

And the boss claimed there were plenty of methods the Villa delegation were able to share with Browns head coach Pat Shurmur and his support staff.

“Although there’s a lot of things that are not football related at all, there are a lot of parallels,” said McLeish.

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