As Aston Villa head into the international break on the back from 11 points from an available 15 under Steve Bruce, here’s a round-up of some of the Villa news stories doing the rounds in the past week.
Scot’s Connection
According to the Daily Mail, Villa are tracking Greenock Morton winger Jai Quitongo.
The 19-year-old is out of contract in the summer and free to talk to foreign and cross-border clubs in January.
While there has been several Premier League teams interested in Quitongo, Villa sent scouts to watch the player at the weekend and allegedly will be monitoring him in Scotland U21’s forthcoming encounter with Slovenia U21s.
Irish Connection
According to the Irish Independent, Aston Villa are one of several clubs monitoring the progress of Dundalk’s Daryl Horgan who has been impressing in this season’s Europa League group stages. The winger is also reportedly being monitored by the likes of Newcastle, Preston and a couple of MLS clubs.
The Horgan and Quitongo interest seems to suggest that Villa have their eye out for an out-and-out winger in the January transfer window.
Polish Connection
It’s also been reports earlier last week that Villa have an eye on Polish striker Lukasz Teodorczyk, who is currently on loan at Anderlecht from Dynamo Kiev.
Why would they have their eye on another striker having splashed big cash on two in the summer? Well, there’s covering the African Nations Cup to think about with three of Villa’s forwards due to leave for the tournament in January.
It could be argued that McCormack, Gestede, Agbonlahor and Hepburn-Murphy should be enough to cover the duration of the tournament, but we shall see.
The Anderlecht rumours are backed up by Villa scouts recently being present at Anderlecht games.
List of scouts for today’s game. #rsca #ANDM05 #efc #wba #whufc #avfc #bvb pic.twitter.com/jbd9iHnzhr
— Sporting Anderlecht (@Sporting_AND) November 3, 2016
Of course, there is the possibility they were looking at a different player/s.
Ex-Villa Mangers to Haunt Villa?
Oh the irony. Two managers that helped contribute to the demise of Aston Villa in recent years and ultimately relegation, are now likely to be working with other Championship teams to be obstacles in the way of Villa’s promotion mission.
Paul ‘We Go Again’ Lambert has been confirmed as the new ‘Head Coach’ Wolves (a very continental title), while Tim Sherwood is the hot favourite to take over at QPR.
It’s certainly add an extra edge to Villa’s two games against QPR and their trip to Molineux in January.
Hutton Retirement
Alan Hutton has called it a day on his Scottish international career. His decision seems to have been influenced by the fact he has lost his place at right-back to Callum Paterson of Hearts.
Charlie Adam of Stoke City this week on BBC Radio 5 suggested that Scotland’s boss Gordon Strachan had frozen some players out of the Scotland set-up because “certain players don’t fit”.
Adam, despite his experience, hasn’t played for Scotland for around two years. The midfielder suggested that Hutton was Scotland’s best right-back, but that perhaps ‘his face didn’t fit’. Maybe the same could be said of Ross McCormack, who surprisingly hasn’t had a look-in either under Strachan.
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