Advanced Media Transfer Plans
Aston Villa supporters watching preseason matches, so far, have been rightly questioning what Steve Bruce’s actual tactics are on the pitch for the season ahead? But the recent signing of Hull City’s Ahmed Elmohamady has now focused their bemusement on the Villa boss’s transfer plans too.
Why sign Elmohamady? A player that Hull City fans had turned against last season after some poor showings.
Also, isn’t the right-side of Villa’s team, while not perfect, already well-stocked in terms of options in the squad?
Well, Bruce knows the player well having already signed him twice at Sunderland and Hull. And, the player works as competition to Albert Adomah on the right flank and also to Bree and co in the wing-back position, if Bruce goes 3-5-2.
With the price being right, it seems a logical enough transfer, but there seems to be more to it than that.
Ulterior Motives
An insider source at the club has revealed to MOMS that the real reason Villa signed the Egyptian international was simply for his Twitter gravitas.
Apparently, the club have been so desperate to break the one million followers mark with their account on Twitter, that they saw Elmohamady as the key to finally get them over the line to save any further embarrassment.
The club put a notification on Twitter this week boasting about reaching the 1m follower mark, while it was clear they were still a few thousand shy. Starting to feel a bit coy about their announcement, the Villa board decided to fast-track the signing, before the Villa Twitter-verse noticed.
The Elmo Effect
Elmohamady has amassed a hearty 1.06M followers on the popular social media platform from just 741 Tweets (the club in comparison were just shy of 1m followers from over 50.5k tweets). Thanks mainly to him being a regular for the Egyptian international team and his profile back home of being an Egyptian in the Premier League.
The transfer announcement of Elmohamady today brought instant results for the club.
Check out the followers column on the Villa Twitter account, and you’ll now see half of Egypt are now following the club, pushing Villa well beyond the million mark of Twitter followers.
The insider source told MOMS:
“Who cares if Elmohamady ever plays for the club? He’s done his job. Social media numbers are front and centre of all transfer policy now at Villa. Why do you think we signed John Terry?
“Terry hasn’t really lived up to his reputation on the pitch since 2015, but he’s got 3.4m Instagram followers and if we could successfully harvest them to follow Villa, he’ll be worth his wages for that alone!”
Cunning Plan
Villa’s transfer policy connected to potential social media gains is apparently quite a sophisticated beast, as the insider source explains in the case of Sam Johnstone, who recently signed with Villa on a season-long loan.
“Villa had the option of signing Sam Johnstone outright from Manchester United, but turned it down,” says the anonymous source. “Once Johnstone signs completely as a Villa player, he’s almost deadwood with his 280k Twitter followers, an amount that would decrease if United fans turned their backs on him.”
“The trick is to keep Johnstone ‘officially’ as a United player for as long as possible, using loan deals, to tap into United’s 12.1m on Twitter and almost 74m followers on Facebook.”
“We seem to have a lot of United fans currently following Villa on our various social media platforms at the moment, they’re actually worse than Baggies fans for it, so there’s no harm in getting a few more.”
It’s all enlightening stuff, but MOMS is curious to know how Villa’s latest signing Glenn Whelan fits into Villa’s social media driven transfer policy? Considering the former Stoke midfielder is probably too old and out of touch to have a Twitter account.
UTV
A Venglos View is a satirical (and sometimes surreal) look at the Villa…there’s sometimes a grain of truth. 😉
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