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As someone who loathes the flood of transfer speculation we’re forced to swim through for the best part of 10 months of every year, I was actually pleased that cold water was poured on our prospects of trading in the market some time ago. However, with the transfer window coming to a close next week, there are a few signs of movement. There may be some ins and outs at Villa Park yet.
Luke Young
Luke Young is now confirmed to be talking to QPR. With their lack of activity so far, their recent take-over and Young’s London connections, this one would seems destined to happen. Which, to me, is a bit of a shame as Young could do a good job for another year and Lichaj could be eased in over the course of the season.
I guess that isn’t the long term plan and Alan Hutton’s name won’t go away, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how it pans out. It offers a like-for-like swap in the wage bill I suppose. Oh, Habib Beye? Yeah, like there’s someone out there willing to take his contract on.
Andreas Weimann
Speaking of contracts, Andreas Weimann has signed a new deal, keeping him at the club until 2014, and then promptly re-joined Watford on another loan until January.
They’re evidently very happy to have him back, hopefully he does well there – starting with Birmingham City on Sunday – and we get him back an even better player next year.
A good example of smart squad management and the right way to develop our own young players.
Good luck to Andreas, we’ll keep an eye on how he does.
Gary Cahill
Gary Cahill provides a timely example of poor squad management with news today that Bolton have rejected a bid from Arsenal with Owen Coyle saying “the word derisory doesn’t even cover it”. Of course, this prompted the return of the wailing and gnashing of teeth among the Villa support in Martin O’Neill’s general direction for selling him in the first place.
I’m not absolving MON of blame, far from it, he ultimately sanctioned the deal, but he was quite clear that he didn’t want to sell Cahill.
The player was desperate for first team football and, at 23 years old, he had Martin Laursen, Ollie Mellberg and Zat Knight ahead of him. Rightly or wrongly.
Personally, I think there’s plenty of blame to go around in not seeing the opportunity within a year or so of that point for Cahill to be in pole position to become the first choice centre half at Villa.
Still, it’s easier to just point the finger at the manager and blame him, the buck does stop with him after all. I just happen to think that Cahill himself could have been a little more patient.
Regardless of who should shoulder the blame, the outcome is that we let a strong prospect go (and he was still a prospect at the time really) for £5m and then ended up spending a combined £18.8m bringing in Carlos Cuellar, James Collins and Richard Dunne on big wages and little resale value, with only Zat Knight providing any kind of offset by (ironically) joining Cahill at Bolton in a £4m deal.
Hindsight is 20/20, but the long term vision at the time is clearly questionable to say the least and we all know where we are now in terms of finances. Surely Cahill could have been given assurances about his future at Villa and placated with a half or full-season loan somewhere.
Still, that’s done now, nothing we can do about it. He may well end up in a similar fight for a regular starting place at Arsenal in the near future. We shall see.
On a more positive note; it’s encouraging that we’ve seen player after player from the academy signing new contracts during the past 18 months or so and despatched on significant loans, in some cases, to continue their development until they can be brought into the first team properly.
That’s the right way to do things, now and for the future. It’s a massive pity we weren’t doing that a few years ago, but we’re back on track now.
I don’t know about you, but I prefer to look forwards rather than backwards. The future’s bright, the future’s claret and blue.
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9 Comments to “Luke Young, Andreas Weimann and Gary Cahill”
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Good post, this.
Not convinced Lichaj can ever be a first team player, though. Not next season or the one after that.
there’s certainly some question marks over him. positionally naive at time, definitely, but not radically different from kyle walker in terms of style and ability IMO.
Lichaj is a virtual copy of Walker and everyone saw him as a saviour. They both go forward well, Walker perhaps a little better going forward but Lichaj was by far better at defense — does everyone forget how he shut down Bale? Walker wouldn’t have been able to do that (he would have been too far down the pitch).
I think the only problem Lichaj has (other than the fact that he has an American accent and therefore is assumed to be inferior) is inexperience. Game time will fix that quickly or show him as a Championship level player — sitting on the bench will not do him any further good.
I can’t say that he will come good but this season is the season to play him and find out.
Heh, nice picture, I wonder if Dunn was big enough to apologise when he watched that incident back?
As you say it’s not an ideal time to be losing Young, especially given it was only yesterday there seemed to be articles quoting McLeish as saying we’d be far too thin on the ground if we let anyone go.
Assuming Young doesn’t start against Wolves, where does that leave us cover wise? Lichaj, Cuellar (is he match fit?) or Warnock (with Clark slotting in at the left)? How do you see it?
that’s a good question.
beye got a few minutes at the end of the hereford game, so he’s not out of the picture. cuellar isn’t fit yet, he’s a few weeks away yet i think.
lichaj was carrying a knock through pre-season, so we didn’t get much chance to see him until the hereford game. i know most leeds fans would have him back in a heartbeat, i guess it depends on how much faith mcleish has in him.
if it were me, i’d throw him in there with the option, as you say, of doing what he did last weekend; shifting warnock to RB and clark in at LB, if it’s not working.
lichaj was awesome against spurs last season, he had bale in his pocket, but was really awful against man city… but then only barry bannan came out of that match with much credit.
Yeah I’d be very reluctant to draw any conclusions from the City game, can’t think of a worse performance last season…
I think I’d tend to agree with giving Lichaj a shot, I’d like to see more of some of our youngsters when these opportunities arise.
I remember Clark debuting against United and being blown away by how well he played, as you say, the future’s bright…
oh, and i don’t think young will be allowed to leave if there isn’t someone waiting in the wings. i presume that means hutton at this stage.
i would love lichaj and beye to take over the right back spot,especially the former,but mcleish will bring hutton in
Was never Luke Young’s biggest fan and will not be devastated to see him go. I think he can be described as Mr. Average. Am a little concerned on the squad depth though and hope he is replaced. If Lichaj is good enough he is at an age where he should be making it and he will not get a better opportunity. Can he take it? I am not convinced but would love if he could.