mallett

Wesley has one leg that is significantly shorter than the other. That’s why he limps when he walks and has a slightly odd gait when he runs. I imagine it’s quite a complicating factor in his recovery. It was also mentioned a few months ago that he had some complications after the surgery that meant he was delayed in returning to Brazil by 8 weeks. 8 weeks sounds like some pretty serious complications to me. Smith said that the COVID outbreak had put Wesley back 10 days so that makes him about 10 weeks behind schedule just based on what is in the public domain. Villa fans need to cut Wesley a lot of slack for a very long time because when/if gets back onto the pitch he is going to take a long time to get back up to speed. Villa have invested a lot of money in him and there is clearly a huge gap he could fill in our squad. The club needs him to come good and the fans could help by having some unconditional good will for him. Toxicity from Villa fans towards Wes is just stupid. It’s true that before his injury Wesley hadn’t established himself as a quality Premier league player but at that point neither had a whole gaggle of our players who have since shown the necessary quality. He had shown flashes of quality (just like Douglas Luiz) but had also struggled. Based on the progression of his teammates we might have had a top quality striker in Wesley by now. The point is that there is no way that he had got to the writing him off stage. So be nice!

I’ve had COVID recently and one of the common symptoms is to totally lose your appetite. I also had acid indigestion all the time. As a result I lost some weight. I thought Targett looked like he had lost weight against Man City. I suspect that he was one of the players who was more affected by COVID. Which might explain why he went off tired. He did have a great game while he was on the pitch. Perhaps the weight loss helped! Really dogged defending, some great 1 on 1 duels won, blocked a lot of crosses, brilliant positional play and bailed out the rest of the defence on more than one occasion when he covered colleagues or made important clearances. On that evidence he is no longer the weakest link in the first 11. Need to get a new backup though!

Great performance by the boys despite losing. However, we need to not get it out of perspective. These players showed that they are not yet ready for the premier league. It was boys against men even if the boys did work incredibly hard. Physically so many of them could hardly run because of cramp by the 60min mark. That just takes time to develop physically and training. As someone else has written some of these won’t make it even as professionals. Bear in mind some of our best prospects were training with the first team and so ineligible. But they’ll always remember that game. Hopefully some of them will make it as well. Maybe if we are safe later on in the season and have some less important games we can bring some of them on for a few minutes here and there to help their development and reward those who have been putting in the right sort of work in training.

According to google translate what Douglas Luiz says in his Twitter post is: I see this video I can't believe it was a penalty, I always support the fairest football, with fewer mistakes, but then I stop and see these types of moves. If we have VAR to help, LET'S start using it CORRECTLY, these mistakes can define the future of clubs!

Well sometimes the manager is trying to put a spin on events so their statements for the press aren’t actually their real judgment. Mourinho for example has his messages he wants to get out there. He is also often trying to play mind games. Bruce isn’t as Machiavellian as Jose but he is always aware of casting himself in a positive light with his messaging. Smith comes over as more straight forward than that at the moment. I think you could tell he was feeling the heat before lockdown though.

Good to watch Dean’s press conference in the lead up to the Burnley match. He doesn’t create a lot of headlines with his remarks but he has a very measured judgment of performances. He described Jacob Ramsey’s performance as ‘steady’ highlighting that he had some good touches but had also been dispossessed a couple of times. Dean said he was pleased that Ramsey hadn’t been fazed by being dispossessed. When asked about Martinez he praised his character and attitude. He also said he would have expected Martinez to have made all of the saves against Wolves except for the Demdonker effort. It was good to hear a fair, honest and professional opinion which matched what we all observed on the pitch but wasn’t influenced by hype. I always feel that the Villa manager is on their way out when they are describing a performance in a way which completely goes against what anyone else watching the match has seen. I think it is when the pressure starts to affect their judgment and therefore their performance. We can all remember former managers in that habit.

Thanks everyone - I did mean Kieran not Kevin of course! Gone back and fixed it now.

Actually I forgot about Drinkwater - I would put him in the place of Holman - an absolutely shocking footballer while he was at Villa

Formation 4 - 4 - 2 Goalkeeper - Peter Enckelman - I think he could be on this list just for this mistake. He came to the club as a 21 year old from his home town club in Finland with no expectations. A few years later however, his stock had risen such that he became the Villa no.1 when Taylor (MkII) sold Schmeichel. EWhatever he had shown Taylor on the training pitch was never obvious on match day and despite hoping he would grow into the expectations of him, Enckelman never really convinced as a premier league goalkeeper but somehow made 52 appearances for us. He never really recovered from THAT mistake and eventually left in 2004. Afterwards his career petered out at Blackburn Rovers, Cardiff and some Scottish clubs without him ever really establishing himself as any club's main keeper. Full back: Habib Beye - Habib Beye is perhaps a bit unfortunate to make this team. I mean lets face it I could just have put in the players that got the club relegated from the premier league in 2015-16 . A 'team' that added up to far less than the sum of their parts and who on their day could lose to pretty much any team from any division on the planet. Bought for about 2.5 million by Martin O'Neill in 2009 Beye made 9 appearances for Villa for the 2.5 years he was at the club before his contract was cancelled 'by mutual consent' (surely a clear sign that his place isn't totally undeserved in this team). Back in 2008 he had been voted the supporters player of the year at Newcastle so as fans we had hopes for him when he signed. Still he managed to get sent off in his 3rd game for the club. The main problem is that it was never clear why O'Neill had ever signed him as he never seemed to want to play him. The reason he is included here is partly for what he represented - the complete waste of opportunity that Randy Lerner's initial largess should have brought Villa. His purchase just seemed totally unnecessary and if the money had gone towards investment in other areas of the team perhaps the whole Lerner era might have worked out differently. See also Curtis Davies, Nicky Shorey, Carlos Cuellar et al. Full back: Kieran Richardson Just not very good by the time we signed him. One of the worst players for one of the worst defences to have ever disgraced the premier league. Richardson had his good spells as a player during his career, he even won 8 caps and scored two goals for England but by the time of Villa's relegation season he was probably the worst left back at the club (others: Joe Bennett, Aly Cissoko, Jordan Amavi). I am sure every Villa fan remembers with horror the absolute gutless shambles that was Villa's defence that season. Richardson only played 11 games but I would put that down to him not being good enough to play more even for that team. As a fan I was never totally sure what had happened to Richardson between him playing for England in 2005-7 and the same player that signed for Villa in 2014. Centre Back: Micah Richards - In June 2015 Tactics Tim decided it was time that someone played Micah as a centre back, the position Micah had always believed himself destined to play one day. In part the move was a reflection of the fact that injuries meant Richards no longer had the athleticism demanded for a full back. Villa's PR machine was quick to highlight his premier league winner's medals raising expectations. Richards had risen to national prominence early on in his career as an athletic and ball playing defender who was made team captain of the previous incarnation of Man City at the age of 19. He was an important part of the first Man City team to win the premier league when he played full back. However, he had lost his place in the Man City team and gone on loan to Fiorentina in an attempt to get some minutes before Villa got him on a Bosman. As such some of us fans had some hopes upon his signing. Besides the fact that he never seemed anywhere near capable of getting to the level of fitness required for a professional footballer during his time at Villa I think he was fundamentally unsuited to being the centre back position. Recently when commenting on a match Micah explained that during his career he had always had the responsibility of marking the space in front of the centre of the goal at corners because he had never been able to master the skill of watching both his man and the ball. Stayed at the club and ran his rather generous contract down. I don't blame Micah for his disastrous Villa career, he was always considered to be a positive presence in the dressing room / training pitch but he was a very expensive cheer leader. Centre Back: Joleon Lescott - Another busted flush signed by Tim Sherwood, Lescott came on the back of a relatively successful season with West Brom which suggested there was still life in the old dog. Declaring his boyhood Villa allegiances soon after signing, Lescott was a player Villa fans had long cast envious glances at going back to his Wolves days. His move to Everton had seem him develop into one of the premier league's best central defenders. At Man City he was able to convert this into silverware with two titles, an FA cup and a league cup to his name. However, his attitude over the course of the season seemed to go down the toilet the same as the rest of the team and his infamous 'accidental' tweet of his expensive car in response to fan criticism of his performance in the 0 - 6 defeat by Liverpool at Villa park lost him any support from the fanbase. It wasn't really Lescott's fault he was too old when signed but the tweet is indefensible and his attempts to do it were embarrassing. Midfielder: Carlos Sanchez - To be honest it's all Carlos Sanchez's fault that I wrote this. A friend of mine is a West Ham fan and recently told me how much he had enjoyed a youtube video by one of the West Ham channels going through the worst West Ham team of the last 20 years. Of course Carlos had made the West Ham team which was the point of interest in my friend telling me about it. Sanchez does have all the credentials to take up a place in the worst Villa team as well. He made 20 PL appearances in our relegation season but probably the reason why he makes the team is because he could have been quite good. Sanchez has 88 caps for Colombia who are a country with some very good footballers. Paul Lambert signed him for about 4.7 million back in 2014. At Villa he showed himself to be quite a stylish defensive midfielder for most of every game, playing the ball simply but effectively, closing people / space down and generally looking like a competent bottom half of the PL midfielder. However, in every match there would be those moments where he had a total lack of concentration and casually played the ball to the opposition's striker in our penalty area for no discernible reason (or some other similar incident). These mistakes didn't seem to lesson with time spent in the league and seemed almost too frequent to be sheer accident. He left Villa following relegation to go on loan to Fiorentina before returning for another unsuccessful spell at West Ham which I think I have already mentioned. Midfielder: Brett Holman - Another who was just not very good. An Australian international, Holman signed a pre-contract agreement in March 2012 to join Villa when his contract with AZ Alkmaar ran out in the summer. As fans we were led to believe that for once Villa going to benefit from a player running down their contract. By the time he joined Villa, McLeish, the manager who had signed him, had left and Paul Lambert inherited the transfer. Looking back it is hard to see why it was ever thought he would be a premier league player. The main attribute he brought was the ability to score goals as a midfielder which was something the club was lacking at the time. However, their is a big step up between the Dutch league and the PL and Holman didn't have the quality to make it. Even at AZ he hadn't made the team during their title winning season. Overall at Villa during his one season at the club, he made a surprisingly high 27 appearances as Lambert throw him on as a sub when looking for goals. However he only delivered 1 goal and was released by mutual consent at the end of the season. He went off to that footballing hotspot that is Dubai to ply his trade for two years. Winger: Aleksander Tonev - With his atomic shot, here on Villa talk we were very excited about the unknown Bulgarian international recommended by Stilyan Petrov to Paul Lambert back in 2013. His youtube compilation showed off some incredible long range shots with either foot as he cut in from the sidelines. However in the Villa shirt the goal was never under any threat from Tonev's increasingly desperate efforts to impress us all. Instead he seemed determined to lose as many footballs as possible with many of his efforts being laughably poor and the fans in the stands being in far more danger than the goal. A loan spell to Celtic which was meant to relaunch his career ended ignominiously with a suspension for racism. Winger: Charles N'Zogbia - Villa's decline under Lerner didn't just take place in the summer before our relegation season. For several years before that, we had been selling our best players and bringing in inferior replacements during every summer transfer window. At one point in this period, our almost ritualistic habit of immediately selling the player voted as player of the season by fans seemed so ingrained that I was hoping we as fans could apply some reverse psychology and start nominating our worst players for the award! In the summer of 2011 in was Ashley Young who departed and the inferior replacement was Charles N'Zogbia from Wigan. At Wigan, Nzogbia had scored goals like this one and he wasn't coming for a small fee. He was arriving for a similar fee to the one which had brought Ashley Young to the club from Watford. Young had gone on to improve himself and become one of the best attackers in the league - he was the only outfield player to make the premier league best XI from outside the top four in 2007-8. Ashley Young had been what Paul Lambert would describe as 'young and hungry' when we signed him as a player. N'Zogbia on the other hand turned out to be the opposite. He seemed to view his arrival at Villa as him him having made it and we as Villa fans only saw occasional glimpses of the undoubted talent. To be fair, his time was interrupted by a bad Achilles injury but he was another player who just wound down the contract at Villa while not playing football. His stats shows he made 80 appearances (many as sub) for a return of 4 goals which is diabolical for someone of his talent playing in his position on the pitch. When his contract finally finished in 2016, N'Zogbia reportedly tried to join Nantes but failed the medical due to a heart problem and ended up retiring. Villa fans would say he had a metaphorical heart problem long before that. Striker: Ross McCormack - Following relegation and Tony Xia's takeover of the club Ross McCormack was one of the headline signings of the new regime as they set about showing how serious they were about returning to the premier league by spending huge amounts of cash (that it turned out they didn't have) buying all of the best players in the championship with seemingly no idea of how to turn them into a team. McCormack was bought for £12 million. It seemed slightly risky not because of his stats - which were impeccable (23 goals and 9 assists for Fulham the previous season) but because of his age. However, as Villa fans we just thought of it as a short term solution to getting us out of the championship as quickly as possible. DiMatteos team seemed a bit unlucky at the start of the season as they played some nice stuff at times without getting the results. In a recent podcast Tommy Elphick explained that behind the scenes things were still an absolute mess following relegation the season before. Elphick said that the culture in the club was completely rotten with a poisonous atmosphere, an incredibly unprofessional culture and even players drunk in the dressing room. That culture didn't start to change until Steve Bruce came in. McCormack however, rather than helping to change that culture as someone coming in seemed to fall under its spell. It was never completely clear how the players bought in that first great Xia splurge would play together and McCormack was one of those that suffered. However, when Bruce came in, it was clear that he was questioning McCormack's attitude before the infamous gate-gate where Ross claimed he couldn't get to training because his electric gates were stuck. McCormack seemed to give up on being a professional footballer while at Villa and in the end Villa paid off the last 6 months of his contract to get rid of him. It was a sad waste. He scored 2 goals in 20 appearances for Villa. McCormack is now occasionally playing for Aldershot Town. Striker: Scott Hogan - Before becoming Villa manager, Dean Smith would routinely humiliate Villa with his tactically smart and attractive Brentford team showing up all the deficiencies of Bruce's expensively assembled Neanderthals. He also apparently sold us a total dud in Scott Hogan. Hogan had a great scoring record for Smith's Brentford but he also had a terrible injury record. Bruce signed him in his first transfer window, not long after taking over when he spent a lot of money. Hogan appeared to be a pacy striker who got onto smart through balls from a team playing possession based football. Bruce was apparently attracted by his fox in the box like skills when it came to scoring from set pieces. His skill set however, seemed totally inadequate for the Bruceball tactics of the team he came into as the ball was lumped up to him. As a player he wasn't one of those players who really annoy fans as he usually appeared to be putting in the effort however as the MONS podcast enjoyed highlighting his actual involvement in games was laughable small. Early on in his career, Hogan had struggled to make it as a professional and his poor touch and other lack of refinements sometimes showed why. Surprisingly, Hogan's Villa career didn't improve when Smith, the manager who had brought the best out of him, took over at Villa. Smith seemed reluctant to play him and in the end sent him on loan to our bitter city rivals. All of which suggests that Smith knew he was getting a good deal when he sold him to Villa for such a large fee in the first place. Manager: Perhaps, controversially I am going for Alex McLeish as the worst manager during this period. He had much better established resources to manage during his tenure than some of the other managers he is competing with for this position. However, he also played the most unremittingly negative football and bizarreley came after getting small heath relegated after a couple of years of similarly negative football. The fact that Lerner appointed him as manager after he won the league cup with our league rivals but also deservedly got them relegated perhaps showed how poor Lerner's decision making was by this time. The Villa fans' opposition to the appointment, while no doubt exaggerated by the blues connection, would have been there to a lesser degree whichever club he came from as a result of his incredibly dour playing style and the fact that he had just got a club relegated. In this case the fans views turned out to be fully justified. Big 'Eck didn't have the resources of previous managers under Lerner but the chequebook still opened for the signing of N'Zogbia. Dishonourable Mentions: David Ginola - past his best Doug signing bought to buy fans off and pretend that Villa were really bringing in top talent. Antonio Luna - great debut was apparently a fluke

Thought it might be a bit of fun in these happier times for us as Villa fans to think back to some of our darker moments. So my challenge for you is to come up with your worst ever Villa team. A few rules: The player has to have played for Villa in the last 20 years. There are plenty of terrible players to choose from in that time period and it makes it easier to compare them. Your team has to have a recognised formation. Each player in your team has to be playing in their recognised position. You have to give a justification for why each player has made it into your team. The rationale for why a player has made it into your team needs to include some element of disappointed expectations. We are not looking for a list of youth team players who played a minute and then didn't go onto make it as a professional. We are looking for players who we as fans had a reason before they played to hope they were going to be good. Whether that be because of the fee or reputation or comments from the manager upon signing them. You can include a list of dishonourable mentions: players who nealry made it into your team but were just pipped at the post for awfulness by someone else. Your team should also include a manager.

I don't know if there is anything in the speculation but I can tell you a little bit about Marcus Edwards which I have gleaned online. Marcus Edwards is 21, English and plays for Vitória de Guimarães in Portugal. He signed for them last season from Tottenham where he supposedly had an attitude problem and failed to make the breakthrough after making his debut at a very early age. Pochettino likened him to Messi when he was about 17 which was a remark he came to regret. After a disastrous loan spell at Norwich in 2018 which was ended early after just one appearance. He spent the 2018-19 season on loan to Dutch club Excelsior (two goals in 25 appearances for club with four assists). Excelsior was relegated but he had the most dribbles of any player in the Eredivisie. However, it seemed to be a breakthrough season in terms of his attitude as he knuckled down and expressed regret for his previous attitudes (and also said he was shy and misunderstood). Last season he got 9 goals and 5 assists in 34 matches playing in the right wing for Vitoria who play a similar formation to Villa (4 1 4 1). Edwards plays on the right of the attack as an inverted right winger (he is left footed) one of our weakest positions. He has some pace, good vision, an eye for a pass but his biggest strength is his dribbling which is exceptional. He is improving his final product and has also improved his defensive contribution this season. However, when Vitoria lost the ball he tended to be left up out on the right as Vitoria's out ball because of his pace and ability to beat a man which means the opposition have to devote some resources to marking him. He is tiny, gets fouled a lot, loses a lot of aerial challenges and needs to improve his strength. I think he would improve us. There is a rumour of a £13.6 million release clause but it is also said that Spurs have a 50% sign on agreement.

I asked where he was in the academy thread. He wasn’t at the Wales camp and apparently only got back from holiday in the middle of it. Nobody on here knows why.

Marcus Edwards is left footed but plays on the right and cuts inside onto his left as Smith prefers his wide forwards to do. I think he has got the talent to succeed the question mark is over his attitude. However most of the suggestions I have seen on here have been right footed wide players so Edwards is an affordable alternative with scope to develop. Don’t know Wijndal but open to being convinced. I wondered about Butland. Keepers need a really good mindset. Carson wasn’t the same player after his blooper for England. Despite that I would be tempted to get Butland in and get rid of Nyland as Nyland is definitely unreliable and the case for Butland’s unreliability is unproven (for us).

Well I am bored. I wonder if it has been long enough that we can once again start listing players we would like Villa to sign during the window - like we were doing much earlier in this thread. My revised list based on recent rumours for £100m: Odsonne Edouard £30m - pace, counter attack threat, goals, dead ball threat, striker Benrahma £25m - LW - Jack may well want Villa to have a viable option for the role so he can move to his favourite position of 8 (and so Southgate doesn't keep comparing him to players like Sancho) Ethan Ampadu - £17m - DM/RCB - £17m - covers / competes with Konsa and Luiz but also gives us better options for switching to three at the back or joining Luiz as DM and playing 4 2 3 1, also offers option of Konsa moving to RB for some games and him covering RCB. Could also be that he plays the pivot and Luiz moves to other midfield slot. Marcus Edwards - £13m - RW - pace, tricks, dead ball ability - cheaper option Rico Henry - £15m - LB - offers pace as opposed to Targett. Targett needs the competition, for me he has come back looking a bit heavy in the preseason training videos. Out: Jota, Taylor, Lansbury, Kalinic, Engels, AEG etc. - the outs should just about offset the incoming so that net spend is about £100m allowing for some jiggery pokery. Prefer us to go big for Edouard rather than cheap with Watkins. AEG has more ability than Trezeguet but Trez worked harder for it and I would want the squad to know that hard work counts for more than talent on its own. Engels is too slow for the Premier league and seems to have fallen out with Smith. I want the defence to push further up the pitch and I think Engel's lack of pace is an issue for that. I don't think Rashica wants to come.

Barry isn't listed as one of the youngsters in Wales on the official site link but Philogene-Bidace is. Wonder why the delay? The youngsters haven't played a competitive game for a long time. They could be very rusty come Sunderland!

Where is Louie Barry at the moment? I noticed that he wasn’t listed as being at the preseason training camp in Wales by the Birmingham Mail yesterday unlike several other promising young players.

Lots of people on here seem very keen on Weston McKennie. I have never seen him play but his whoscored stats mean his concentration is rated at “very weak” which means that he makes a lot of errors. From the brief highlights on YouTube he also needs to work on passing the ball to where the players receiving it want it. So while I can see he has got some good qualities, like most of our current players he will need to develop as a player to become a good premier league player. It’s another gamble. Given our situation, despite all of the talk on here we are probably going to have to gamble on players coming good again.

Back on topic - there is an surprisingly long analysis of JPB (as nobody is calling him) here by the website 'Avillafan'. The piece has some interesting information about his background - coming through from the Prodirect Academy as well as some analysis of his qualities. I think most of the examples of JPB's play are from this short video on twitter here (which I think was previously posted in another thread). Looks like he is one to keep an eye on. It will be interesting to see if the new structure will lead to more players from the academy actually making the grade in the first team. Presumably Villa will need to have firmly established their place in the premier league before we can be blooding a large number of youngsters. Certainly the post lockdown series of matches carried a relegation pressure which would not be conducive to the development of a young player.

Do you mean the EFL Trophy rather than the EFL cup?

What if Smith has been on holiday for the last two weeks? And we were never going to buy any players while he was away - all our speculation has been futile! He has to have a holiday sometime. It seems he was pretty busy during lockdown coaching the players etc. Plus his father died. Post lockdown was very intense.The man needs a break. In fact I think this is true of lots of the premier league which is why the transfer market is pretty quiet. I also wonder if clubs are waiting to see what the Covid effect is on transfer fees. Some of the clubs must be in financial trouble. Will there be some fire sales which bring down fees for the whole market or just a few isolated players? The uncertainty is stopping some clubs from being active. Arsenal have announced 55 redundancies, Liverpool stopped their pursuit of Timo Werner as a result of their uncertainty. The two clubs who have been most active have been Chelsea and Man City for whom basic economics with the relaxation of FFP don’t seem to apply as they are funded by a sugar daddy. The question is are Villa in the same position?

Ampadu could tick some boxes for us. Real competition / cover for Konsa as right sided centre back and can compete with Douglas Luiz in the pivot role. I would only want him on a permanent basis though. Hasn’t had a proper chance at Chelsea and didn’t get many games at RB on loan this season. Chelsea are incredibly weak at the back at the moment though so you would think he would be one they hang on to. Depends who they bring in. If Lampard has to win trophies then he would probably prefer to get players with more experience in his back line.

What about: Marcus Edwards (20) for the RW spot - perhaps has a release clause for £13.6m but could be available for less. Brings pace, ability to beat a player, lots of through balls, dead ball specialist, and gets some goals. Needs to work on physicality, aerial threat, crossing. Has improved his attitude since leaving Tottenham and looks to have matured, making a success of both his time in the Dutch league and the Portuguese league. This has been shown by the improvement he has made in closing down and defensive side of his game. Value should go up. Emi Buendia (23) for a RM spot - Perhaps available for £25m. He played on the right side of the 3 in Norwich's 4 2 3 1 formation most of the season just gone. However looking at his stats over the season I wonder if he would be better suited to moving to SJM's position on the right. I would then move SJM to the left. Has some of the best defensive stats in the league for midfield before the restart. Didn't score a lot of goals but produced a lot of through balls and created a lot of chances for Pukki. Also has dribbling skills and covers a lot of ground. Needs to improve his decision making - often tried to do too much with the ball last season and lost the ball too often however this might improve in a better team. Needs a striker / front players in front of him who have good movement for his qualities to pay off. His lack of goals last season makes him a poor fit for the RW position in the formation Villa play. Said Benrahma (24) LW/RW - Perhaps available for £25m depending on the outcome of the playoff final. Brings possibility of beating opponents, creating and scoring chances. Exciting footballer with the flair and tricks to go past players for fun and an eye for goals and assists. Unproven in the premier league and comes at a high price considering. Is he the new Dale Stephens / Benny McCarthy et al in terms of being linked to Villa but never arriving? Weaknesses: Doesn't put in a great deal of work defensively and doesn't have the real pace which we need in our attack somewhere. Has normally played in LW position for Brentford so could be an ideal replacement for Grealish if he leaves. Tammy Abraham (22) striker - Very unlikely but perhaps available for £40m+ depending on whether he is to be frozen out at Chelsea. Now a proven premier league striker he is a Chelsea boy through and through but has maintained a good relationship with Villa. It is difficult to see him being anything more than a substitute with all of the players Chelsea are signing this summer but he may not see it like that. Poor form in the second half of the season has also contributed to this feeling. Misses a lot but has the great movement and work rate of a natural goal scorer. Has already proven that he fits into Villa's system. Has recently signed a one year extension to his current contract but speculation continues as there are suggestions that talks with Chelsea have stalled re an improved contract to match his current status as their leading scorer.

No

Neither Eze or Benrahma have the pace we need so we should only get one of them and for me it’s Benrahma

Should also say that I like Buendia too but only if we get somebody with some pace as well!