What Does Picture of Ross McCormack Wearing the New Villa Shirt Mean?

Strange Sighting

The other day, while MOMS was looking at the current squad on the Aston Villa official website, an almost surreal image appeared on our screen – Ross McCormack wearing the latest 2018/19 Villa shirt.

On an earlier MOMS visit to the website, a week or so ago, there wasn’t any McCormack picture alongside the rest of the Villa player pictures in the new Luke Roper shirt. Instead it was just a generic grey shadow outline of a player, indicating no picture had been taken.

McCormack Return?

In this seemingly new picture of him, McCormack was looking fresh and revitalised. The unexpected sight triggered the thought that maybe due to FFP and Villa’s striker injury issues, he was finally being rehabilitated into the squad.

Maybe Villa’s owners had instructed the management team to not waste resources and give the prolific Championship goalscorer a clean slate?

MOMS documented this rare sighting of Ross McCormack in the new shirt by adding him on the latest podcast cover art just for a laugh.

The next day, a MOMS’ reader pointed out the McCormack picture was actually a photoshop job. The head of McCormack had been taken from the club’s picture of him when he first signed for Villa.

That is, unless McCormack hasn’t aged, smiles the exact same way and is still rocking the same hair style and facial hair.

And what about the disappearance of McCormack’s half-sleeve tattoo?

Maybe that’s why the player has been out of action, as it’s taken him two-years to recover from having that removed!

Picture Conclusion

Relations between the player and club must be so strained that he won’t even come in for a portrait, for the £30,000-a-week (or so) he gets paid. Or the Villa marketing team will rather deceive supporters than pick up the phone to him.

If there is such bad blood, if I was the club, I would be getting him to jump through a few hoops for his wages. If he refused to have a new picture taken (with a big smile in a Villa shirt), then at least you could add it to a list of evidence for possible contract termination through breach of contract.

McCormack wasn’t the only one to receive the photoshop treatment on the Villa website’s first team squad page, old pictures of Micah Richards and Aaron Tshibola also seem to have been manipulated into new shirts.

Personally, I’d rather leave such players blank and pictureless.

UTV

A Venglos View is a satirical (and sometimes surreal) look at the Villa, although the above story is true. Check out more Venglos Views

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