Au Revoir
The selling of Jordan Veretout has been the second mini saga of the summer transfer window. First there was the Jordan Amavi to Sevilla debacle, but finally this story has a conclusion.
The 24-year-old French midfielder has signed a four-year contract with Florentina joining Carlos Sanchez, who completed a move there after his loan deal last season.
At first it was expected the French midfielder would be heading back to France, with St Etienne in hot pursuit. The only issue that made Villa slightly uncomfortable with that deal was the reported low transfer fee of around £4.5m.
While MOMS isn’t exactly insisting he’s worth much more, the fact Villa paid reportedly approaching double that in signing him in the first place, meant Villa were looking to at least get their money back.
Veretout had allegedly given his word to St Etienne, whom he’d performed well with last season, while on loan (featuring 35 times and scoring three goals).
Sporting director Dominique Rocheteau, publicly vented his frustration, when the player decided to go to Italy instead.
“He didn’t respect the word he had given us and the agreement we had with him,” said Rocheteau. “His arrival had all been organised, but he then told us he wanted to go to Fiorentina.”
The good news for Villa with the Florentina move is they will get a reported fee of over just over £6m (plus add-ons), an improvement on what the French were willing to pay.
Lets be honest, while at Villa in his 25 appearances in a Villa shirt, he showed very little to actually miss about the player.
Defoe Replacement
The only resistance to Sunderland’s relegation, Jermaine Defoe, has long left the Mackems, and apparently they are deadly serious on replacing him by enlisting the services of Villa’s Ross McCormack to lead their promotion fight.
Now this is a complicated one.
Reports at the moment suggest they want to loan him for the season.
Now, McCormack turns 31 next month and reportedly cost £12m. Again, as MOMS has said before, this was naive business at the time by the Villa board, as it seemed to assume McCormack would fire Villa back to promotion. He didn’t and now we are a little stuck.
So, do we now loan out a player to one of our immediate promotion rivals and then receive him back at the end of the season? Another year older and pretty much useless to our needs.
Yes, you take a season’s wages off the books, but that is about it. He won’t play against Villa in two games directly, but he can do plenty of damage in the rest of their games, if he is motivated enough.
If McCormack is going to a rival, surely it’s better to sell him outright for whatever fee you can get? And then forget about him.
A lot has been said about Sunderland’s poor financial shape, but they will be privy to parachute payments, so surely they can cough up some kind of fee.
Villa have been shackled by drastically overspending on a player with next to little sell-on value, but lets try to at least make the best out of a bad situation and make sure he doesn’t come back and haunt us.
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Agreed with above sentiments. However we shouldn’t need to buy another striker; Hogan, Gabby, Green, El Hamoudy, plus a bunch of mid fielders who should chip in. Plus a few youngers didn’t look bad in the friendlies.
Problem the club has is a succession of managers with the aid of incompetent and naive boards that have been incapable of doing what they are paid to do, manage! Imagine getting a job as a factory manager sending the ones you can’t cope with to the canteen or home and still pay them then employ a load more and do the same again! It’s about time our board reminded the manager they pay him to manage! He has more than enough knowlege and contacts in the game to have either shipped out what he doesn’t want and get the ones left to play to the best of their previously proven abilities. That’s the managers job Bruce! !!
I agree that the sale of McCormack would make more sense.
In some respects, I am a little bewildered why Sunderland appear so lacking in funds. The Pickford and Mannone sales have brought in substantial income and they have the parachute payment following relegation. Is Ellis Short really running the club down pending a sale?
If we don’t want McCormack, we really need to find a genuine solution, not a stay of execution. As the article suggests, we are in a weaker position next year with and older player and with a no better than a break even arrangement in the interim.
Well it seems to me that in the end the club have come out on top with this deal, sad to say no thanks to our board who to me don’t appear too savy when it comes to business, and on that note why are we thinking about loaning McCormack to one of our rivals and no doubt paying half or more of his wages surely this is just plain crazy, when they send him back at the end of the season he will be turning 32 and completely value less. For me this is a sell or keep situation just take what we can get for cash and send him on his way now, we should be telling Sunderland to pay up out of their parachute payment or take a hike.
Finally now that Veretout has gone let’s hope for another striker as back up for Kodjia then I think we are all set for the season.