The season of the disingenuous transfer headline has been in full swing for a few weeks now, yet Aston Villa have yet to announce one new senior player.
The local press have been running headlines like ‘Said Benrahma given green light to complete Premier League move amid Aston Villa links’ and ‘Origi latest as club confirm deal’, but once you click and arrive at the article, it’s just a pile of worthless word dust.
We’ve already had the old classic go-to headline from the Birmingham Mail of ‘Club confirm Aston Villa have completed summer transfer deal’ that leads you down anticlimax alley of Villa signing some 16-year-old academy prospect. It’s a trick they roll out every transfer window.
Their favourite headline so far has to be ‘Aston Villa are ‘in talks’ to sign striker who scored 11 goals in one game’. At least that one has a fun element to it.
Anyway, enough of them.
Luiz Clause Tales
The Sport Witness, which runs with the tagline ‘global football intelligence’, but tends to be pretty dumb when they make up their stories, ran a predictable Villa-related clickbait story today aimed at making Villa fans soil themselves for clicks.
It offered up the headline of:
Manchester City ‘moving’ to spend £25m on Aston Villa player – Looking to trigger clause
Stating:
Aston Villa midfielder Douglas Luiz could move back to Manchester City this summer, according to claims from Brazil.
Globo Esporte says the Citizens are busy planning their squad for next season, having been eliminated from the Champions League by Lyon, and one of the topics on the table is the return of the 22-year-old.
Blah, blah, blah.
Naturally, the Birmingham Mail parroted the rumour and went one stage further in amping up the drama with the clickbait headline of ‘Man City poised to trigger £25 million transfer deal to snatch Douglas Luiz off Aston Villa – report‘. Which implied it was happening – cue more Villa fan pants soiling.
Have a little think who’s currently in the Manchester City midfield?
Also, what are Manchester City’s goals in terms of what they want to win next season?
Currently it makes little sense for City to bring back Luiz to sit on the bench, which at this point in his development, would be his likely destination at City. If Luiz continues to develop at Villa with regular game time as a starter next season, establishing himself as a Premier League player (to rise above those pesky working visa complications), then Pep Guardiola’s side could swoop in to trigger the clause next summer, if they needed him.
He would fast-track as a regular Villa starter to be a more developed and mature Premier League player and thus a closer fit for City’s needs.
The idea of quoting an oversea’s source is often done to try and legitimise the story, especially if it’s from the homeland of the player in question. You have to remember the clickbait hustle is a global operation.
How many Villa fans on Twitter have previously been led down rabbit holes by ‘journalists’ from other countries pretending to profess local insider knowledge? Remember the Abel Hernández incident? He now plays for Qatari club Al Ahli, so he didn’t get very close to Villa Park, did he?
The only reason the Luiz story is running is because they’ve read about his release clause and the market during this pandemic has been pretty stagnant (so they need to write something). It’s probably as simple as that.
Lazio interest in Wesley – LOL
Speaking of the inane and tenuous…the supposed Lazio interest in Wesley was bordering on desperation by some press.
Because Lazio were in the mix for Wesley last season, at the time Villa bought him, some outlets have recycled this interest. It’s as if they think it’s an on-going concern, failing to reason that Wesley is still in rehabilitation for a serious long-term injury. He’s still months off from returning, so why on earth would Lazio drop a sum that would have to be in the ballpark of the amount Villa paid?
It. Makes. No. Sense.
So. Why. Even. Write. About. It?
The Birmingham Mail/Live ran with the cryptic and disingenuous headline ‘Aston Villa receive Wesley transfer boost as £20m striker bid made‘ to tantalise you to their pointless churn.
Do you think Villa CEO Christian Purslow is going to try and fire sale Wesley? It ain’t going to happen. And no club will pay a fee close to £20m for a player who hasn’t played since January, that only just signed for a club.
Villa haven’t received any boost, because Lazio will not buy Wesley. It’s a non-story.
Likewise, they were reaching from the previous interest draw to churn out further ‘Daniel Sturridge to Aston Villa’ yawn rumours. An angle that is perpetually trotted out window after window.
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Grealish Clickbait World
Meanwhile…in Grealish Clickbait World – which now must have a comparable GDP to most major European countries, thanks to the immense wealth from advertising earned off Grealish transfer stories – the transfer links get even more senseless.
We’ve seen ‘Grealish to Arsenal’ desperation links in the past few weeks, but even more hilarious are the Grealish to Spurs stories, as if it’s a serious consideration.
What bit of Spurs having to pay off a £850m new stadium without many of the previously planned revenue streams, do these deluded people who write this tosh not understand?
The plan to pay-off the stadium has been seriously compromised by the Covid pandemic. In the foreseeable future they’ve lost all kinds of potential diverse revenue streams, that included NFL games, concerts and sporting events (including Anthony Joshua), not to mention the match day revenue they had successfully maximised from offering excellent facilities.
Spurs will not be able to meet the type of price that Villa would ask for Grealish, even if they were thinking of selling him.
Anybody who has been to the new stadium, even if they don’t support Spurs, would have felt a bit of sympathy for them and thought, “Ouch. Bad timing for a new stadium, lads.”
Spurs had their chance to snatch Grealish, but their lowballing ultimately backfired.
UTV
We as humble Villa supporters have enough other more serious situations to concern ourselves with, (global warming/ climate change) call it what you will Covid 19, Brexit, the ever increasing costs of the “White Elephant that goes under the name of the new rail system which will blight our lovely countryside and increases by millions every other day, to name but a few. We have had our fill of bad news where all these subjects are concerned, must we be bombarded with false rubbish reporting on the subject that gives us hope and relief from the other catastrophes that we are surrounded with, why do we continue to dither whilst other clubs are getting on with it, we have had enough time to realize our shortcomings but if we don’t pull our socks up we will start the new season with the same squad as we finished with. We require above all PL experienced strikers, let’s not be a soft touch for other clubs to steal our gems, for goodness sake someone show some real leadership and sort the situation out someone is getting paid a lot of money to do this. Screaming frustrated UTV.
Great article and really sums up the conjecture the UK and global press live by when nothing much is happening…….. i am interested to see what business we do this year to strengthen us and really value your honest appraisal of the transfer situation.
Thanks
Another great read lads
Excellent article and completely agree with everything said too much fake news garbage this time around and personally I’m completely teed off with the daily Jack Grealish saga, but I think now it’s had its day and I can’t see him leaving.
Everyone has their opinion and believe what you want but until anything happens who knows , on that subject I do think that as the players are now returning we should get on with some signings they need tome to gel with their new team mates. It’s hard to know what’s going to happen but as far as I’m concerned it was as clear as day that we were lightweight and toothless up front all season and it’s crucial that this is addressed as a priority. Again my opinion is let Davis and Samatta go and if we did get a decent bid for Wesley I would let him go as well, none of them anywhere near PL standard, we have to show lots of firepower to survive the PL and I just hope the club gets this right.
Regarding Luiz I can’t see any reason why Man City would move for him now, I think they may monitor the situation for another season but at the moment he would be a bench warmer and that suits no one.
So come on Villa get a quality goal scorer or better still two goal scorers first of all, after that I would go for Cantwell from Norwich great potential and wouldn’t cost the earth.