Summer Transfer Window
Aston Villa have had squad overhauls in transfer windows before and they’re not always guaranteed to move the club in the right direction. Take last year, for example, talk about a false dawn. But of course, this summer’s overhaul will hopefully address the mistakes of that one and set Villa back on course to a return to the top table.
In an attempt to revive what had become a rotten and disillusioned squad, leadership was sought, as was legitimate previous success at Championship level. In terms of the moral of the squad, the outs were as important as the in’s.
In short, when you see the below lists of transfer activity, Robert Di Matteo, CEO Keith Wyness and owner Tony Xia certainly tackled the task head-on with a mass overhaul.
So lets take a look at five reasons to be cheerful as Villa fans after the summer transfer window…
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1. #AllOut
The list of ‘players out’ is a good effort by the club to rid itself of those who let Aston Villa FC down last season. Yes, financially the club would have had to take a hit in discarding players like Guzan, Okore, Bennett, Veretout and Sanchez, for example, that could have commanded a transfer fee, but time is of essence and at least their wages will be shed.
There’s been a lot of talk about release clauses, but ultimately they have served Villa quite well. £5.1M for Ciaran Clark is good money in MOMS’ book, when you consider Okore went for free and Elphick came in for around £3m.
£7m+ for Irissa Gueye, not bad. Villa lost a couple of million there, but that was more down to the previous Villa board being foolish enough to pay the inflated price in the first place.
It’s a shame Big Sam got the England job, as Villa would have probably have got £5m for Micah Richards too.
Villa have been savvy enough to have sell-on clauses for both Traore (amount unknown) and Okore (50%), so at least that is some eventual blessing on both of those deals.
Of course, there are still a few faces to move out with Gabby Agbonlahor top of the list. There’s always the January window though. Sorry, but his time’s up.
UTV
We’ll be discussing all of Villa’s signings on the next episode of the My Old Man Said Aston Villa podcast show, coming very soon. Subscribe and listen for free here – iTunes /Soundcloud / Tunein / Acast / Stitcher / PlayerFM
sadly, we had no leadership, which stems from the chairman downwards, for the last 4 years. Lerner lost interest and gave the club no direction handing the reigns over to Lambert who had too much on his plate avoiding the drop. Sherwood was a breath of fresh air for a time but then he got no backing in the transfer market and his recruitment, even though he can’t take all the blame was awful. Newcastle went down the same path a season before with Pardew and recruited many players from the French league, who couldn’t adapt to PL pace. One or two – yes not half a dozen!
We must applaud Xia and his team for turning the club around as I could only see us going in one direction like the famous Yorkshire trio of clubs.
It may take another season , it all depends how well the players gel and how they are missed going to the African nations.