With Young gone and Downing wanting out, could it be a worrying sign that Villa may be losing its ability to attract big names in the future.
In the past three years we have sold or offloaded Barry, Milner, Friedel, Young, and it looks like it won’t stop there. Now, if you put yourself in the shoes of a decent Premier League footballer, will you really want to pledge your playing future to a club that has become synonymous with selling its best players and in doing so shrinking its ambition.
Selling players is not just about the money and finding someone to play in that role. It is about the reputation of the club and what it wants to achieve. That is why the ‘bigger’ clubs now bombard Villa with offers for our best players- they know that invariably the Chairman will sell if the price is right, instead of telling them to clear off and keep away from our players.
This message also runs through the existing squad. I would be willing to bet any amount of money that Marc Albrighton, our standout young player of last year, will see what Ashley Young has done (and what Downing wants to do) and he will be of the same opinion. He will play Ash’s role for a while until one of the bigger clubs comes in with an offer to buy him.
It is the reason we will struggle to get big name players to sign for us. They will suspect that the best of the squad around them will be sold in the coming seasons. It is also why we failed to secure the services of Roberto Martinez. It is a bad sign when the Wigan manager turns Villa down without even having a meeting with the Chairman. It may well have been loyalty to Wigan, but it could equally have been a dislike for Villa’s current path of sell, sell, sell.
There is not one big name in the transfer target list this summer, and I suspect there won’t be for some time.