Dropping Down
Last summer a handful of players gave up their Premier League clubs to join the Aston Villa revolution. Tommy Elphick, James Chester, Albert Adomah and Miles Jedinak all decided they wanted to join Tony Xia’s Villa rebirth after the club had dropped like a rock from English football’s top-tier.
The mission was simple, one season in the Championship, the glory of promotion and then they’d be back in the Premier League playing for a bigger club than the ones they all left.
What they didn’t have to look at was a fully formed league table to gage the validity of Villa’s new direction. They joined in good faith that Villa were moving in the right direction.
Reality Bites
It’s been a stuttering start, but it’s certainly not the end of the road yet in terms of getting promotion, but suddenly it seems a tougher task now then it did. Six of Villa’s eight wins have been against the bottom six, not exactly promotion form.
So what of the latest newspaper rumours of Villa sounding out Fabian Delph, James McCarthy and Tom Cleverley as potential targets for Villa?
Do you really think any of them will look at the Championship table and think, ‘that’ll be a great move’?
These three midfielders are arguably a level above the aforementioned Premier League players we signed in the summer. All are in their prime age-wise, meaning it would be a strange career choice to have half-a-season playing Championship football when they’ve managed to get to the top of their game playing for teams currently doing well in the Premier League.
Newspapers write about ‘player power’ when it comes to players wanting to better their career and leave clubs, but why is it forgotten in situations like this when they write red herring stories? A club can want any number of players, but the player has to want to come to them or it’s all hypothetical and poor guess work by the journalist.
If any of the three players were unhappy with their current situation, since they are at top English clubs and unlikely to move to a better club, they’d more than likely wait until the end of the season to reassess their situation in the summer.
The bottom line here is don’t waste too much time clicking on such rumours.
UTV
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Whether Cleverly left by his own volition or we let him go is besides the point. He really wasn’t that good. We rescued him from sitting on the bench at Man U, made him a better player and he then rewarded us by buggering off. Delf was more talented than Cleverly, but we’ve replaced these players with ones at least as good. Fix the mid field and we’ll start to rise up the league.
With all respect , MOMS take a couple of asprin and get a bacon sarnie down ya , you’ve still got relegation hangover in nearly all of your articles .
??? We’re 12th in the Championship. Dreadful performance after dreadful performance. There’s a way to cure hangovers and actually prove you’re a football team and cut out all the mistakes. I’d rather be in the PL than turn into Sheff Wednesday (although they could make the play-offs this season in front of us). I’ve been hanging on for improvement…and hanging on…let me know when it’s coming.
Are you serious about Tom Cleverley and Delph. They are the reason we are in this position. If players cant see beyond ‘what is now’ to ‘what will be in the future’ do we really want them? We have been struggling since MON left so there is no ‘quick fix’. SB will make us a better team and in a couple of seasons we will be back in the EPL.
I didn’t give my opinion of Delph or Cleverley, just saying they wouldn’t drop to the Championship in spite of these newspaper rumour stories. If SB doesn’t get us up by next season by the latest, he’ll be a goner! I think you’re more patient than Doctor Tony will be!
Fabian Delph is not the reason why we are in this posistion. Delph had the option to leave on a free. Every man and his dog thought he was going to do just that. Instead he signed with us and put a low buy out clause in his contract in the event a top 6 side wanted him. He signed a new contract with us to repay the club so there could be some financial benefit for us in the likely event of leaving. Its a honorable thing to have done. His only mistake was to say he was staying.
If anyone is to blame it was the back office and management.
Blame Tom Fox. That buy out clause could have easily been higher, it’s like he didn’t really sign anything, but just engineered a bit of cash for Villa. We used to be a top 6 side…I think it was more top 4, if you know what I mean.
Crap article, Cleverley was at Villa and was so awful we got rid. Adomah is twice the player he is.
Article is about those players not wanting to drop to Championship. Cleverley was on loan and then chose Everton over Villa as a free agent. We didn’t get rid.
Very true about Cleverly choosing to leave to be nearer to his family even if Everton is at the wrong end of the Mersey Canal