As per usual of late, I’m struggling to keep up with our signings.
It’s all come thick and fast and it’ll probably take me weeks, if not months to get my head around what will probably be the first eleven, let alone the whole squad.
Never mind, at least it’s way better than us not signing anyone.
I still have concerns that possibly more than a few of our signings, while good on paper, are going to struggle at Prem level, not because they’re not good enough, but it just takes some adapting too. The likes of Vertout back up my point.
But hey, it’s a time for optimism and even cautious me is doing his best to suppress any such doubts.
I’m drooling at the thought of 30,000 season tickets meaning near sell-out crowds with the entertaining, attacking footy that Dean Smith has promised us and demonstrated previously.
It’s going to be entertaining, just like it was in the seventies and eighties, whatever happens and that’s a good thing.
Anyway, the reason for the post is that I’ve seen an article that suggests Kalvin Phillips has been offered a package from Villa that will increase his wages from his current £10,000 a week to £60,000 a week over five years.
Now obviously that’s a big jump, but let’s really put that into perspective.
The difference is £2.5 million, as opposed to £15 million over that five years.
Of course, Leeds are doing their best to hold on to him, but the same article suggests they can’t match the £40,000 a week that they pay their highest paid players.
So if we guess they’re offering him £30,000 a week, he’ll still seemingly double his wages if he comes to us.
In fairness, it seems Phillips really wants to stay at his club and that’s admirable.
But hands up, who could resist doubling their wages in what might prove to be a short term career?
Of course, most of us would be happy with the £10k a week, which would set us up for life, in the first place.
But money is a strange thing.
I remember my first payrise that took me from £24 a week to £29 a week and thought it was a massive boost.
Then realised that the £29 rising to £37 seemed not so good a jump. Then the £37 rising to £49 seeming even smaller.
And…. well, you get the idea.
When you’re already earning decent money, it takes a bigger rise to impress you, I’ve found.
Hence while £40,000 a week and feeling the love at Leeds would probably satisfy Phillips, that £60,000 is going to prove pretty irresistable.
At least Phillips is continuing to do his job and train as he’s contracted/paid too.
As opposed to Marvelous Nakamba, who’s supposedly gone AWOL at FC Brugge and refuses to train, which is absolutely disgraceful in my opinion.
Ok, register your disdain at a club that is seemingly holding you back from probably a similar increase in wages, but you should at least turn up to do the work that you’re being paid for.
Don’t get me wrong, his actions will result in us getting the player at a cheaper price than Brugge want and that’s good for us.
But I do feel some sympathy for the Belgian club and Nakamba really ought to be playing the game that the club want him too, in hiding his feelings, to maximise Brugge’s leverage.
He signed a contract, after all.
But I guess that’s how the Premier league gulf can affect people.
It’s not the first time this sort of thing has happened, but I still don’t like it.
Dean Smith or at least someone at the club must really rate Nakamba, because signing him seems to go against all that Smith has told us about the type of player he wants.
He’ll certainly have to prove himself as a really good player before I’ll be referring to him as “Marvelous”.
Phillips, I’d love us to sign.
Nakamba, well, while his seeming desire is nice, his actions aren’t.
I’d rather miss out on him, tbh, although it seems he’s due a medical shortly.
Perhaps DS etc will have a re-think when they see this. If MN can play up at Brugge when it suits him, he can do the same at AV too. No one is bigger than the club.
See the Daily Mail have raked up JG’s history on the back of an alleged altercation (verbal) at a night club linked to Connor Wickham (although there are no photographs linking the two) at a night club. Now, in my view there is nothing wrong in that as long as being in the nightclub is OK with AVFC.
The f’ing press in this country are a disgrace in the way that they try and destroy people for the sake of selling papers or worse, clicks.
What it does say is that footballers, alongside any other high profile, high earning entertainer are fair game so they have to be on their best behaviour 100% of the time.
I suspect there is absolutely nothing in this but Dean needs to put his arm around JG and just remind him that he’s an even bigger target now he’s in the Prem.
There is a video doing the rounds of JG on the same night – I only hope the club deal with this correctly and nip it in the bud.
hey folks. anyone know where to watch the villa game against leipzig on saturday? i know villa youtube don’t have it but is it on the germans youtube channel ?
I’ve been keeping an eye on the RB Leipzig site and this is their live streaming page –
https://www.dierotenbullen.com/de/aktuelles/rbl-live.html
I’d guess that it would normally be blocked to anyone outside of Germany but, as it’s a friendly, they might make an exception. If anyone hears of a live stream please post it here. Desperate to watch this one.
If it is blocked, you could try using German DNS server…
https://underagaslitlamp.com/2019/07/30/aint-nobody-anwar-el-ghazi-vs-the-premier-league/
Call me a silly, romantic Villan who loves nothing more than getting my Villa hairs standing on end. Love this piece – go Anwar.
OK I’ve had a couple of glasses 🙂
UTV
I’d be fairly confident it’ll be available somewhere.
More important to me is if we’ll be able to watch live games on AVTV, now that we’re in the Prem.
Of course, domestic fans won’t be able to (cough, cough), but I’m thinking of international fans .
The AVTV site just says “updated information coming soon”.
Games kicking off at 3pm on a Sat became a nightmare to watch while balancing my own kids’ sporting games – but even when I did make it to watch earlier in the season, we kept losing. I stopped watching for a while in the hope that my watching was some bad omen. I’m ready for the PL though. I too hope they keep showing through AVTV as ESPN will not likely prioritize Villa over other EPL games too often.
Being reported that we’ve agreed a fee (£8.5m) for Tom Heaton.
If so, only really expect us to sign another striker as marvellous Marvelous appears to have faded from sight!
Good news times 2…
In my opinion, this could well be our best signing of the summer! Looking forward to official announcement. I’m sure Smith will be fair and Steer will play in the cups…
Apparently the deal for the lad from Leeds (whose name escapes me) is not gone. Maybe that’s the reason Marvelous hasn’t checked in yet…
Kalvin Phillips – Villa still favourites with the bookies to sign him (1/2)
I suspect the marvellous Marvelous deal is waiting on a work permit and offers better value (?) than Phillips at £20m.
Tbf Purslow said they had multi targets for each position.
Badger, reckon your $150m estimate is light! I think I read somewhere that Smith was given a £150m transfer budget following promotion – might turn out to be pretty accurate.
Picking up on your comments about squads gelling and adapting – your point about Vertout is well made. I remember watching his first game – he looked totally lost but like a number of other players signed in that disastrous summer they’ve shown they were more than decent (Idrissa Gueye being a notable example). I think the difference here is that Villa appear to have a sound strategy (not moneyball!) of building a squad block by block that Smith sees as having his footballing philosophy. I also like the pairing up of Brazilians, Egyptians, French speakers, Spanish speakers etc so using the buddy system in management speak.
Also if they do sign marvellous Marvellous then in Engles / Nakamba and Wesley we have the outfield spine of the Brugges side that won the league two seasons ago. Bolt that onto the spine of the team that won promotion, add a goalkeeper and spice it up with real competition for places and we might have one hell of an exciting recipe.
Over to you Deano.
Trying not to get too excited. UTV COYL
Burnley in 15th last season earned £104 million and we got around £12 million in gate receipts last year so it looks like our owners are finding quite a wedge of money from somewhere if our transfer spend is going to be around £150 million alone.
I quite like what the owners have done so far. They’ve been at the big matches and looked more than happy when we’ve won, they’ve kept themselves in the background and let the manager get on with it but most importantly they’ve got on with restructuring the club and providing the money needed to rebuild the team.
Tony Xia talked the talk but Wes and Nassef are definitely walking the walk.
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The other point Pat is that the media are really focusing on Villa because of the level of spend and the easily made comparison with Fulham, not because of the number of players signed. For instance Norwich have also signed 11 new players (Sheffield United 7 – soon to be 8) but Norwich have been reported as having taken a different approach to Villa by sticking with their promotion team!
Apart from Uncle Albert, Villa didn’t actually release any player that played regularly in the promotion side albeit Hutton played early on and Whelan figured more towards the end of the season – but both are the wrong side of 30 and, of the two, only possibly Whelan might have been retained.
Today on Sky they put up an entirely new Villa team formed of acquisitions (including Gilbert and El Ghazi but excluding Mings) but they completely missed the point which surely is we now have completion throughout the team of players playing in their correct positions – makes a rather nice change from having 5 RB’s and no CB’s!
*competition not completion!
Hitch, also unlike Fulham I can’t see Smith throwing all the new players in the deep end at once. We have a spine to the team that play well together and the new players can be introduced over time.Having said that Jota, Guilbert and Wesley are nailed on starters IMHO (and of course Heaton if he comes).
Just noticed that Norwich have also signed 11 new players – no comment on that probably because they haven’t spent upwards of £120m – just saying
It would appear that Sheffield Utd are going for Ollie McBurnie which means that their pursuit of Maupay is probably off.
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/aston-villa-handed-transfer-boost-16674386
It looks like Villa’s main rival for Maupay is Brighton. Brighton just avoided relegation last year and have a new unproven manager with not much money to spend. I’d be very surprised if Maupay chose them over the Villa.
So if we get Heaton and Maupay it will have been a dream window for us as far as I’m concerned. Can’t wait for the Spurs game on the 10th.
Totally agree. If we can get Maupay in and offload a few players before the end of the window, it will have been a fantastic summer! I really think we are going to do well this year!
Tom Heaton signs – welcome to the Pride. Just another top striker and we’re done – not wanting to be greedy!
Brilliant news on Heaton! So pleased with this!
Slightly sick at hearing Nakamba has been given a 5 year deal. Something’s not right with this one. Could Marvelous be a mercenary?
Agreed, a goal poacher and 2-3 exits and that is a tremendous summer’s work by all concerned!
Think we have to trust in Purslow / Smith on this one plus we have to be careful believing everything reported on the media.
If he is a mercenary and he helps us consolidate in the Prem and then returns US a profit – still good business.
Just been chatting with Villa ST’s and they have been told that the Luiz deal got a work permit by making him the second highest paid player at the club (which makes him ‘vital’ to the club) – that’s why Grealish had (another) pay increase so he remains the highest paid. Buy back clause is £25m after one year rising to £30m in Y2 hence Man City funding his wages.
Sounds right to me
I am absolutely chuffed by the signing of Tom Heaton. He’ll give us real solidity at the back and a lot of Premier League experience.
However, I hope that Jed Steer sees this as an opportunity to improve. He’s only 26 and he probably has at least another ten years in the game. I could still see him taking over from Heaton in a couple of years if he puts the work in.
I’m being really greedy now but any news on Maupay?
I appreciate that Hitch, but I thought we’d learned lessons with half-decade contracts. It’s especially odd as Jota got 3 years and Tyrone, 4. I hope the club didn’t bow to demands for 5 years. That would be alarming. A relative unknown like him should be snapping a PL club’s hand off if they dangled a 4 year contract in front of him. I hope I’m wrong on this one!
Fair comment BFR
BFR we are on a positive run. This truly is a dream window. If the experts Purslow and Smith think Marvelous is fine by us then I back them. I’m not an expert therefore cannot say he’s a good buy and he’s a rubbish buy. This summer seems so much different to the money baller regime.
We live in an age of negativity. Sucks to that! Villa are on a roll. We can all listen to the comments of Brian Little. We are back. We are stronger than our competitors think. Listen to the snide comments made by Wolves fans. They thought they were about to rule the Midlands after 40 years of insignificance. Even better, our great owners intend for us to compete in Europe. Not only compete, but win! Just think, when we lady conquered Europe the biased press gave us no recognition. They are in the same place again. But this time we have financial muscle, a Villa supporter who is manager, a Villa fan who is captain, a record 30,000 season ticket holders, 7,000 reserve season ticket holders and we haven’t got to me and my son who want to continue to attend. We truly are on the move. At a minimum let’s surpass Wolves achievement last year, why not? Think bid. We are a massive club who are undervalued by our opponents. Let’s utilise their arrogance and take them to the cleaners.
Ps Jota was given a 2 year contract
Wow, you should give the half time talks, Sid! I’d play for you.
I totally agree, Sid; you’re preaching to the converted. I am usually a positive voice on here. I just don’t agree with a 5 year contract for any ‘risky’ signing, especially one who’s happy to go AWOL to get his way. Is he happy to play second fiddle to Luiz? Maybe with a fat 5 year contract, he’s very happy. See what I mean? This is my concern. That he’ll either rock the boat if he’s not picked, or be happy to sit out, bleeding the club, a la Richards, McCormack etc…
Maybe there’s a clause in the contract somewhere to cover ‘issues’. Our benefactors didn’t get their wealth from winning lotteries.
Interesting article about all the rule changes this season –
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/48965849
Happy with Heaton and not so marvellous about Nakamba! Like BFR it doesn’t sit well with me when players ‘force’ a move! We have had a few who have done the same to us. Stories linking Green to Preston and rumours that Lansbury will now be offloaded plus quite a few more I would imagine. Overall though things very positive and I have more optimism than pessimism. We have been picked for TV on BT sport away to Citeh. Obviously thinking ahead 2nd v 1st!
Well City can’t be 1st all the time 🙂
I totally agree that Heaton is a good signing.
Very solid keeper that Burnley fans attributed to them staying up last season.
Jed’s no 2 again, but I suspect he’ll be ok with it and his time will hopefully come.
Get that striker in, which imo, is going to prove tricky, as we either shatter our record or go for a more staid, prem-proven, but older type and we’re sorted.
It’s going to be interesting to see who leaves now, as I can’t think of anyone who clubs are chasing or even interested in.
Lansbury is being touted by the media and us fans, but he won’t bring much money in, as he’s hardly played for us and is probably on top money for Championship level, for instance.
I struggle to see how we’ll get much money back and I haven’t even considered squad numbers yet.
Anyone know where we stand in that respect?
Here’s what the 25 man squad could be:
GKs: Heaton, Steer, Kalinic or Nyland (one to leave)
FBs: Targett, Taylor, Guilbert, Elmo
CBs: Mings, Engels, Hause, Konsa, Chester
Wing: El Ghazi, Jota, Trezeguet
Mids: Grealish, McGinn, Hourihane, Luiz, Marvelous, Thor or Lansbury (one to leave))
Fwd: Wesley, 2 from Kodjia, Hogan, or Keinan + hopefully one more striker
I think that’s 25! So, no place for Bree and O’Hare to go out on loan…
It’ll be interesting to see if we go for another winger. Benrahma rumours won’t go away and Harry Wilson has been mooted quite seriously in some places. I’m blown away no one has been in for Bowen yet, who would be my pick of the bunch and then I’d be looking at Jota who could also fill in at the centre. I don’t think either Thor or Lansbury will get much if any game time this season and could expect to see both leave. I fully expect another striker to compete with Wesley and Kodja and be interesting to see what happens with Davis, if he goes on loan or stays to compete. He’s not a Heskey yet but if he doesn’t up his game and score more goals, then unfortunately, good hold up play or not, that’s all he is right now. He could be good back up to Wesley if we get a poacher in to replace Hogan.
My bet is we get Benrahma and a striker who hasn’t been mentioned in the media yet and if Lansbury as well as Thor leave, I could see us firming up another CM as think we those rumours about Philips and the French guy don’t seem to be going away either.
Texas, it’s being reported that following the signing of marvellous Marvelous we are no longer interested in Phillips. This makes absolute sense and signing a player with Champion League experience for £11m looks a better deal to me than a (albeit good) Championship player for £20m + if reports are to be believed.
Purslow / Smith have always said they have multi targets for each position.
I think another quality striker and we’re done although Smith has said he’s looking to bring in two more players. After that we’ll concentrate on shifting players out – unlike Bruce who shifted players out before we had replacements (although I accept that might have been influenced by Xia’s lack of cash!)
So Andre green to Preston on loan. This seems like a sensible move as it will give Andre game time as I don’t think he’ll get a look in with El Ghazi, Trezeguet and Jota available.
Hope he does well. He’s still young and his time might still come.