Only Deal So Far
When it comes to scraping together cash from player sales to quell Aston Villa’s financial crisis, Pierluigi Gollini going to Atalanta for around £3m (a loss on the transfer fee Villa bought him for) has been the only movement so far.
Roberto Di Matteo had got Gollini in despite, as Bruce once told MOMS, Villa previously compiling several scouting reports on Gollini over the years that didn’t recommend signing him.
Gollini recently hinted in the Italian press that his relations with the Villa boss when he replaced Roberto Di Matteo, weren’t great.
“I didn’t feel good with the new English coach and with his companions,” said Gollini.
“On arrival, I was greeted coldly, while at the Atalanta everything was different. I played a lot with Aston Villa, but I wanted to go back to Italy.”
Other Business
Villa have been waiting for income from existing transfer deals that have a backend payments. It was already reported that Villa asked Burnley for payment in advance for a bonus payment to be made from the Ashley Westwood deal. Now Villa have their fingers-crossed that another potential extra payment for another ex-player is coming their way.
Adama Traore, who has a £18m release clause, will potentially be leaving Middlesbrough in the summer transfer window, which would trigger a sell-on clause Villa have. Hopefully, it’ll be for the release clause amount, although is it really likely he’ll be valued at that? If he is, it should bring in around a £1m, if you’re guessing it would between 5% to 10%.
Chester Transfer Nonsense
Selling players to lower the Villa wage bill is going to be difficult, due to the existing high wages Villa are paying most of their squad, as discussed in an earlier article on the possible outs.
James Chester and Jack Grealish, the two players that Villa supporters hope the club hang onto, are probably the club’s only two assets worth anything in the current market. The stories so far for both of them have been just rehashed rumours.
If you believe that James Chester would leave Villa to move to either Stoke City or Middlesborough in the Championship, then football might not be the sport for you. Why would Chester go to any other Championship club?
Chester came to Villa as he was promised and probably expected a swift return to the Premier League. Now he’s at the peak of his powers, that’s where he’ll want to head back to, so he won’t do another season in the Championship for another team.
If he does move it’ll be to the top-tier. Brighton has been mentioned and you’d think he would be of interest to half a dozen Premier League teams.
Grealish is an England Fan – Deal With It
Meanwhile, there is nothing fresh to report on Jack Grealish in terms of other club’s legit interest. There’s been some dumb clickbait nonsense trying to further Spurs interest to the player, due to the fact that Grealish was tweeting to celebrate Harry Kane’s England goals.
Er, hundreds of thousands of other England fans were bigging up Kane on social media. Does that mean Spurs want to sign them?
The low frequency that some media operates at times is simply embarassing and insulting.
Huth Clickbait
Leicester City’s Robert Huth becoming a free agent has set the ball rolling for pretty much every local paper in England to write stories about Huth being linked to their respective team.
A quick Google search will produce stories linking the defender to Villa, WBA, Derby, Middlesbrough, Swansea, Stoke, Hull City, Reading and Bristol City. And that’s only the first page of Google search.
Would Huth really fancy a hard season in the Championship, over, say a return to Germany? It remains to be seen. The player will be 34 at the start of the season and Villa surely needs to start looking at longer term centre-backs, rather than another short-term fix of a high-waged old timer.
If you see mystery headlines that mention a ‘6ft 3 inch beast’ or ‘free agent defender’ but no name, it’ll be a speculative rehashed story about Huth.
There’s also been mentions of Ivorian defender Samuel Yohou, but considering he is 26-years-old and a free agent after limited action for Ligue 2 outfit Paris FC, he just doesn’t seem good enough.
UTV
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Ruling out a Chester move to another championship club is a but naive. Chester played for villa because he wanted promotion to the pl. If he sees his best chance of pl football within the next 2 years coming from a team who are likely to get promotion from the championship (eg stoke, wba, even leeds) then why wouldn’t he move yhere. In fact he is more likely to move to a club that has better odds of promotion than villa, which at this stage is virtually all championship clubs. Move to a club thatvmsy get promoted or stay with s club that wont? No brainer.
Naive is thinking he won’t move straight to a PL club, if he wants to play PL football! He’s more than good enough, it’s not rocket science.