N&N for MON?

[villafan306]

Martin O'Neill loks poised to make his first moves in the transfer market.

Reports surfacing this afternoon suggest that we have launched a £7million bid for West Ham's Nigel Reo-Coker and that we have made an enquiry to Celtic regarding the availability of Japanese midfielder Shunsuke Nakamura.

Firstly though Reo-Coker. The England U21's team captain has been linked with a move to B6 quite frequently since we handed in a transfer request at West Ham a couple of weeks ago. It was reported almost immediately that we were in pole position to sign the 23 year old and we have become the first club to launch a formal bid despite interest from Arsenal, Tottenham and Newcastle.

Reo-Coker joined West Ham from Wimbledon in January 2004 for £500,000 and has impressed for them throughout his career until he had trouble with the fans after a few bad performances and became a something of a scapegoat for their relegation woes this season. Reo-Coker's performances picked up towards the end of the season though and combined with the controversial Carlos Tevez, saved them from relegation.

Of course, the old addage ITSOTP (In The Shirt On The Pitch) applies but all the signs are looking good on this one. Ideally we would wrap up this one before the England U21 squad fly out for their European Championships but things don't always go ideally in this world.

Onto Nakamura now and as of yet this only seems to be at the enquiry stage. The Celtic midfielder has been a star player for them since joining from Reggina in 2005 and would obviously boost the club's profile in Asia.

Shunsuke can play anywhere across the midfield in an attacking role (though best suited to the right hand side of the park accoring to Football Manager). Nakamura is a dead ball specialist too, something we really need to look at during the transfer window im my opinion and this could signal the end of our interest in Jason Koumas should the transfer go ahead.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, nothing has happened yet nor is it likely to happen for a while considering the International games currently being played but who knows, there may be a nice surprise for us.

[OutByEaster?]

He's a very good young player, and despite the obviously unhappy split with West Hams fans, he was very much a part of the group that got them to the FA cup final and kept them up (despite the cheating) this season.

I think he'll bring us an energy and dynamism that our midfield doesn't currently have.

A good deal for us, a good deal for them, and a good deal for Nigel.

[avsteve]

I will be pleased to see him in a Villa shirt. He is young with plenty of potential and better than Gavin McCann who, despite giving everything never convinced me fully as a top player. Lets hope this is just the start.