Luke Young’s agent has confirmed that he is discussing personal terms with Liverpool. Meanwhile, Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson insisted on showing his Macedonian hosts the courtesy of discussing tonight’s Europa League match against Rabotnicki, refusing to discuss Luke or any other Anfield transfer business.

To confuse the issue, The Sun claims that Luke Young didn’t make the trip to Portugal and the deal has “collapsed“. Up to their usual standards of journalism then. He definitely made the trip.

Plenty more speculation about Milner of course, nothing really worth addressing though. He looked relaxed and happy enough from the pictures and videos I took a look at. I don’t know what can be read from that, probably nothing. Just saying.

Player transfers aside, we won’t be in action until Saturday night’s game against Feyenoord, but Benfica will kick off the three way tournament on Friday night against the Dutch side before meeting Villa on Sunday night. Until then, training in the Algarve sun. Not a bad life, is it?

And finally, some product placement… Steve Jobs, Dr. Dre and the Greek goddess of victory are grateful for Habib Beye’s endorsement.

That’s checkmate by the way, Habib.

[Photo credit: AVFC OS]

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Nathan Baker limped off midway through the first half with what looked like a pulled hamstring, Nathan Delfouneso may have wished he could have joined him after seeing very little of the ball during the first 45 minutes.

Spain held the majority of possession during the first a half and converted that into two well worked goals. Liverpool’s Pacheco got the opener after some find work on Spain’s left drew England’s back line in before the ball was cut back to the far post for Pacheco to casually side foot past Declan Rudd. Captain Keko got the second, again following some nice build up on Spain’s left, drifting into space in the middle and firing in from 12 yards.

Somehow England managed to get one back when John Bostock, who had replaced Baker, shaped himself well to volley in a loose ball from just outside the box. (see video on the left)

Canales scored Spain’s third goal to cap a clever free kick routine that England stood and admired as much as the crowd and TV audience. (video at bottom of post)

Delfouneso did get a couple of opportunities to show his ability with the ball at his feet during the 2nd period, but England never really threatened Spain’s goal, despite playing with a back three to chase the game.

Even if they’re back in time, I would doubt that either of the youngsters will be included among the squad heading to Portugal tomorrow, so their first, and only, chance of any pre-season action with the first team will be the final warm up against Valencia at Villa Park.

Incidentally, it will be interesting to see what sort of team Valencia play at Villa Park since they’re going to be playing a second friendly the very next day at Eastlands against Man City.

Random Villa Factoid: England Under 19s manager, Noel Blake, made 4 appearances for Aston Villa during his 3 years at the club between ‘79 and ‘82. Remember?

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As we head ever closer toward the start of the 2010/11 season, with much speculation about the likes of Man City suffering as a result of these rule changes, I thought it worth a quick analysis of our squad against the new rules.

The first thing to understand is the definition of “home grown”:-

Premier League
A home grown player is defined as one who, irrespective of his nationality or age, has been registered with any club affiliated to the Football Association or the Welsh Football Association for a period, continuous or not, of three entire seasons or 36 months prior to his 21st birthday (or the end of the season during which he turns 21).

Players Aged Under 21

Each club can use as many players as they like who are under the age of 21 on January 1st 2010, regardless of nationality.

25 Man Squad

Clubs are restricted to registering a maximum of 25 players over the age of 21 on January 1st 2010 for use in the Premier League and must submit a squad list on the day after each of the two transfer windows have closed.

Within that 25 man list:-

• a maximum of 17 players not home grown.
• a minimum of 8 home grown players.

Note: The minimum of home grown players can be regarded as a “soft minimum”, meaning it is not obligatory. For instance, it’s fine if teams are only able to list 6 home grown players, but they can not name more than 17 players who are not home grown, so they would only be able to register 23 players in that case. Remember, there is no restriction on the number of players under 21.

If teams do not have 25 players, they are able to add free agents outside of the transfer windows. However, if they do have 25 eligible contracted players, they must be named.

Current Aston Villa Squad

This is the current first team squad with reserves and some of the more senior academy players included for analysis purposes:-

Under 21 (Unlimited)

Marc Albrighton, Nathan Delfouneso, Fabian Delph, Andreas Weimann, Elliot Parish, Shane Lowry, Barry Bannan, Ciaran Clark, Nathan Baker, Chris Herd, James Collins, Harry Forrester. 12 Players

Over 21, Not Home Grown (Maximum of 17 Players)

Brad Friedel, John Carew, Moustapha Salifou, Stiliyan Petrov, Brad Guzan, Habib Beye, Carlos Cuéllar. 7 Players

Over 21, Home Grown (Minimum of 8 Players)

Luke Young, Steve Sidwell, Richard Dunne, Stewart Downing, Ashley Young, James Milner, Gabriel Agbonlahor, Curtis Davies, Emile Heskey, Nigel Reo-Coker, Nicky Shorey, Stephen Warnock, Isaiah Osbourne, James Collins, Eric Lichaj*, Jonathan Hogg. 16 Players

* I believe that Eric Lichaj will meet the home grown requirements, but it’s clearly not a problem if he does not..

Conclusion, The 6+5 Rule And Europe

Given MON’s frequently berated policy of favouring young British players, it’s hardly surprising that we have absolutely nothing to be concerned about with the new rules. With only 21 players categorized in the over 21 age group, we have room to add more without anyone leaving, but with the likes of Luke Young, Steve Sidwell and James Milner all looking likely to be heading for the exit, we’ve plenty of wiggle room.

Also, just in case you missed it, FIFA quietly announced during the World Cup that they would be dropping their pursuit of the 6+5 rule since it was clear that it would be impossible to get past the EU’s freedom of movement for workers laws.

Personally, I was delighted to hear that as I felt it was going a little too far. Encouraging youth development through reasonable quotas within a squad context are one thing, determining starting elevens based on nationality was something else altogether.

So, these rules are probably about as tough as we can expect for the foreseeable future then, but as I mentioned last time, they’re practically identical to the squad requirements for the Champions and Europa Leagues in any case. In fact, those rules, if anything, are slightly tougher since UEFA requires that at least 4 of the 8 home grown players submitted in the 25 man squads for those competitions to have come through the club’s own academy.

I haven’t looked at City’s squad in this detail, but if they are going to fall foul of rules that have existed for European competition for some time, they certainly haven’t thought things through very well.

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Well, that’s exactly what happened.

With three minutes left in Mondeville, Ricky van Rhijn brought Georg Teigl down in the box and Hertha Berlin’s Marco Djuricin converted from the spot to give Austria the unlikely win.

Wycombe’s Matthew Phillips popped up three minutes into injury time in Saint-Lo to grab the late equaliser for England, setting up a semi-final appointment with Spain on Tuesday.

To be frank, I both expected and hoped to be writing a post entitled “England’s Loss Is Villa’s Gain” which would have focused on the bright side of having our three players back in time to take part in some of the remaining pre-season schedule.

As it turns out, the two Nathans get the opportunity to play against a very good Spanish side heavily supplied by the Barcelona academy, but Andreas Weimann’s tournament is indeed over.

As I’ve mentioned before, both of the English lads missed all of pre-season as England went all the way to the U-19 final last year, but Weimann did take part and was part of squad took part in the Peace Cup tournament, starting in the final against Juventus.

I’m not sure if MON would want to give him some additional time off, but maybe he’ll be included in the party travelling to Portugal for the games against Feyenoord and Benfica. Those two games will take place within 24 hours of each other so a full squad would be useful and firepower has been something we’ve been short on so far.

Next up, Walsall on Tuesday. I wouldn’t expect Weimann to be involved in that one, but we will have Heskey, Warnock and Guzan coming back on Monday.

As for Milner, well it’s highly unlikely that he’ll be in Bescot next week, especially after the reaction just hearing his name drew from the Villa support at half time in Dublin today, but we shall see.

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A player is worth what the buying club are willing to pay and what the selling club are willing to accept in recompense. No more, no less. We can look to transfers of other, similar players as much as we like, it’s a useful guide to a point, but doesn’t have any real bearing. We can consider what the player was purchased for, but that is largely irrelevant.

There’s no getting away from the fact that he cannot be sold for more than the buying party is willing to pay or less than the selling party is willing to sell.

On top of this, one of the factors that the majority of fans seemingly fail to appreciate when drawing their entirely subjective comparisons is that there’s a world of difference between selling a player who you’re very happy with at the club and is in your long term plans and a player who is perhaps getting into the latter stages of their contract and, though they may be a decent player you’d be happy to keep, you’d be equally tempted by a fair offer. That’s not even to mention the players that just don’t fit and you’d get shot of in a second or have actively sought to find a buyer for.

House For Sale

Let’s draw an analogy. Imagine you own a house, a nice detached four bedroom house with a double garage in a great neighbourhood. Let’s say its market value is £500,000. Admittedly, the analogy does fall down a little here since property values are very much influenced by sales of similar properties in the area, but there are also other factors and bricks & mortar comparisons are far less subjective than football players.

Now, your house might be valued at £500,000, but that’s largely meaningless until you come to sell it. Sure, it’s an asset that you can borrow against as collateral, but otherwise it’s just numbers on paper, it doesn’t put food on the table. If you needed to sell for some reason, perhaps you’ve been offered a job in another area and need to move, you may well put it up for sale at £500,000, but if the market is depressed and you only receive offers in the region of £400,000, then what? I guess it’s only worth £400,000, take it or leave it.

On the flip side, imagine you are entirely content in your home, not even the slightest thought of moving in your mind, and there’s a knock at the door one day. You open the door to find a clearly very wealthy man who informs you that he’s in love with your house and has to have it.

He offers you £500,000, that’s what it’s worth, right? Are you going to take it?

I’m going to assume you wouldn’t. Surely he would have to make it worth your while. Whether you’re willing to accept £750,000 or you’d want at least £1,000,000 is down to you and whether he’s willing to meet your price will define whether the transaction takes place. Nothing else.

OK, so let’s pretend that our property admirer scratches you where you itch at £750,000. You know there’s a very similar house to yours around the corner that’s up for sale and you reckon a swift cash offer in the region of £450,000 will get you the keys. It’s a bit of hassle, but that’s £300,000 profit for you. As they say, a nice bit of business.

Fast forward 2 years and our rich man is no longer so happy in your old house and puts it up for sale. Market values in the area have increased a little, but the market is still a bit flat and £600,000 would be about fair. He paid £750,000 though, so he puts it up for sale at £825,000. Do you think he’ll get many interested buyers? Should anyone looking to buy a house in that area care what he paid? Will they give him anything close to £825,000 when the house across the street is available at £600,000? No, of course not.

Granted, one other factor that causes the house analogy to fall over is that it’s an inanimate object. It has no thoughts or feelings, it has no ambitions and certainly doesn’t have to get along with a squad of other houses. However, the point of having to pay more for something that is not for sale stands.

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He naturally spoke in glowing terms:-

Richard Dunne
Stephen Ireland is brilliant so, if he became available then absolutely I’d recommend him. But the manager does his own thing. Regardless of who comes or goes, he still ends up with a team that challenges for a top four or top five.

I would recommend the whole Irish team if he asked but he does his own thing and that’s the way he is. He picks a squad, we go into the dressing room and everyone gets along. I think that’s his basis of the team.

Yeah it’d be great but the two of them [Robbie Keane & Aiden McGeady] are at different clubs and as far as I know they’re happy there. Whether the manager is interested or not is different, but me personally I’d take the two of them.

It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had at least four Irishman at Villa Park, but Dunne was hardly going to say anything different, now was he.

Dunne goes on to reflect on playing in Dublin this weekend, retirement and the likelihood of James Milner getting much playing time at Man City. The quotes once again come from extratime.ie who were at today’s press conference and I’d like to extend my gratitude to them for publishing extended quotes, rather than spoon feeding sound bites to illustrate a particular narrative.

Also, they’ll be covering Saturday’s friendly against Bohemians at their Live Matchtracker. I’m not sure what AVC will be doing yet, if anything, so that’s definitely worth keeping in mind.

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It took a while for an actual post to appear on the Sky Sports website, but here it is. There are no actual quotes, but Sky are quite unambiguous; they claim that MON “has told Sky Sports News that he is ready to cash in”. They don’t claim that he also told them that he wants to leave, but that’s surely a safe assumption based on the stated willingness to sell.

The rest of the news and football blogging world are perfectly willing to accept Sky’s word and have all raced to publish a post that reiterates the basic claim and appended some kind of background fluff and/or speculation that we’ve all heard before, suffixed with “more to follow”.

It’s a race to break news, even when they are doing nothing really beyond repeating the single, simple claim from Sky Sports:- MON “has told Sky Sports News that he is ready to cash in” and it now moves at the speed of Twitter.

Here are some screen grabs of a couple of the initial posts put out by the likes of BBC and ESPN:-

It’s difficult for me. I have a very clear policy at Aston Villa Central of not actively partaking in speculation and rumour mongering. On the other hand, Sky have been extremely concise in their claim and, even without quotes, the writing appears to be on the wall. It’s difficult for a site named “Aston Villa Central” to sit on my hands until this is 100% confirmed.

To be clear: I’m not suggesting that this isn’t true, but the news is absolutely everywhere without a single quoted word yet. Not one.

My opinion on Milner going to City hasn’t changed. Upwards of £20million surely is a lot of money, with or without Stephen Ireland as a makeweight, but we’ve still got to go out and spend it on a player, or players, who will be brand new to Villa. Maybe Joe Cole’s £18.72m Liverpool contract adds some perspective in terms of value. That’s what £90k a week over 4 years runs to and doesn’t take into account a signing on fee, which I read to be £6m, or other costs associated with paying an employee such as national insurance contributions (generally accounted for at 10% of salary), etc.

It’s also hugely symbolic for Villa to be selling our key player two years running. And to Man City to boot. They might regard their aspirations as somewhat higher, and colour me extremely naive if you wish, but I still regard them as a direct competitor.

Personally, I think it’s a spoiler tactic from City, they don’t really need Milner, and it’s a mistake on Milner’s part to go there, but, if Sky are not twisting the facts too much, that would appear to be the case. If Milner’s heart lies elsewhere, then we really have to let him go and squeeze every penny out of the deal.

Market Value

I’ve seen a lot of talk from the McExperts pontificating about what he is or isn’t worth and most are missing the point. You don’t sell something that is not for sale for what it’s worth. He wasn’t worth £12m when he was a Newcastle player, but he wasn’t for sale and we paid what he was worth to us. He’s not for sale now, City will have to pay whatever he is worth to them.

I’d still prefer it if he stayed though and until he’s actually gone, he’s an Aston Villa player. We had exactly the same thing with Gareth Barry two years ago: MON eventually conceded that he was willing to sell at the right price, but Liverpool didn’t meet that valuation and he stayed for another season. Granted, that wasn’t his best season in a Villa shirt, but it was a season nonetheless and £12m a year later was still an exceptionally good deal for us.

We shall see.

Updated With Quotes

It’s not a website I’m familiar with, but extratime.ie have been willing to supply exactly what MON has said. By the way, just in case you weren’t aware, the squad are in Ireland right now ahead of Saturday’s friendly against Bohemians and I saw some pictures and video this morning which suggested some kind of media day is going on. I suspect that MON’s words are taken from a press conference so when Sky Sports claim that he has “told them”, they mean in the same sense that The Sun “got the big interviews” by sitting in press conferences during the World Cup in South Africa.

That’s how it works.

Here’s everything I’ve got, including some words on McGeady which are bound to fork into their own story, I’ve highlighted what was said about Milner in bold type.

Martin O’Neill
I’ve got most of the senior players here with me and I know how infuriating it can be to be making a lot of changes, particularly in the last minutes of the game for spectators who have come to watch them. So I will make a few changes at half time. But the idea is to give the senior players a half each.

You’ve got 20 players with us at the moment, including two goalkeepers. Richard Dunne obviously will start the game but I would like the senior players to get a half each.

Aiden McGeady, I think he has got the ability to be able to play in the Premiership – without question. I had him when he was a kid at Celtic. I played him without worrying too much about his youth at the time. He played against AC Milan one night at Celtic Park in the Champions League and he was absolutely fantastic.

Obviously there is a question mark over James Milner. I had a conversation with James before the World Cup and he intimated that he would like to go at that time. I haven’t spoken to him since. I know there are conversations between his agent and our chief executive. Man City have made an offer for the player, but our valuation has not been met.

I’m sure things may well get resolved. James is due back next week along with the rest of our World Cup players. I would imagine things would get resolved one way or another in the very foreseeable future.

Aston Villa are a top quality side and we are linked with players. When Man City are interested […] obviously they are in a different stratosphere but they are building up a squad capable of challenging for the Premiership. So this year is going to be especially difficult.

As the chairman mentioned, maybe it is a case of probably having to sell to buy. That is something I’m delving into at the moment.

Analysis

A lot of headlines are flying around which are basically variations on “James Milner: I want to leave Aston Villa”. Here, MON reveals that’s where Milner stood during their brief meeting before the World Cup, so it’s not exactly new news. MON says that he hasn’t spoken to Milner since, but conversations have been ongoing between agents and clubs directors and that he expects things to be resolved soon.

Martin O’Neill is generally pretty guarded in what he does and doesn’t say to the media and I struggle to believe that he would let Milner’s desire to leave slip out if he thought that he’d be staying. While he may well not have spoken to James himself in the last several weeks, he won’t be out of the loop either.

It’s worth baring in mind that since they did last sit down, City have added Toure and Silva to their midfield line up. Maybe Milner knew that before, maybe he saw the same list Noel Gallagher saw and his “mind was blown”. On the other hand, maybe he’s now looking at what is being assembled at Eastlands and wondering whether the money is worth watching from the sidelines.

Again, we shall see.

The news did indeed break out of a scheduled press conference at the team’s hotel in Ireland and in BBC’s defence, they did have a journalist present. What happens these days is that they first break the news in the fragmented format that Twitter allows and then that in turn feeds the blogs and news publications that were not present. The whole thing snowballs out of control as everyone fights for the traffic with increasingly sensational headlines.

As I suggested above, now the initial furor has died down, the McGeady quotes have started getting picked up and are spawning their own storyline.

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FC Twente’s Steven Berghuis scored the only goal of the game for the Dutch in the 6th minute with a strong header from some distance to cap a fine cross. They were clearly the stronger side and enjoyed much of the play during the first half, leaving England looking short of ideas and limited chances in front of goal.

Delfouneso did manage to side foot a loose ball in the box on target, only to see it cleared with some ease by Bruno Martins, and also scored what appeared to be a perfectly legitimate goal in the second half which was mysteriously disallowed, but was otherwise fairly quiet today.

Controversy

My feeling is that the goal was disallowed as a result of the referee being influenced in some way by a Dutch player apparently injured at the other end of the pitch, amidst calls to have the game stopped. England had played on, as they were quite within their rights to do, and there may be some controversy surrounding the decision in the post-match interviews.

Nathan Baker played at left back and he certainly appears to be a better centre half, although he certainly wasn’t bad at full back. It’s fair to say that Stephen Warnock will not be looking nervously over his shoulder though.

After France’s disappointment in South Africa, they can at least be a bit more optimistic about their future after their young side added a 5-0 destruction of Austria to the comprehensive 4-1 victory over Holland they opened with. England’s hopes of a place in the semi-finals must now be slim.

Group B is currently topped by Spain with six points, followed by Portugal with three, ahead of Croatia and Italy with a point a piece. Spain will play Italy and Portugal will take on Croatia in the final group games.

Ireland

Meanwhile, the Aston Villa first team – including Gabby I believe – jetted out to Dublin tonight ahead of Saturday’s pre-season friendly against Bohemians.

Bohemians were unceremoniously dumped out of the Champions League last night, losing the return leg of their 2nd round qualifying tie against Welsh side The New Saints 4-0, despite carrying in a 1-0 lead from the home leg last week.

It’s a shame as TNS will now go on to face Anderlecht in the 3rd round, the winner going into the Champions League play-off round, the loser drops into the Europa League play-off round where they become a potential opponent for Villa as we attempt to qualify for the group stage. It could, therefore, have been a potential scouting trip, but the Welsh champions apparently didn’t read the script.

After the Irish trip, the boys head back to the Midlands briefly to play Walsall before heading out to Portugal for the Guadiana Cup games against Feyenoord and Benfica.

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I did this before last year, so I’ve updated it with the data from 2009. All you have to do is look at today’s date in the left hand column and then scan across to the right to see how many players we had signed on this day in the past.

For example, today is July 19th and on this day last year we had made one signing; Stewart Downing, but Gareth Barry signed for City six weeks earlier and the fees cancelled each other out. By this day in 2008 we had also made just one signing; Steve Sidwell, a signing viewed by some observers as a preemptive replacement for Barry who seemed destined, for many, to be heading to Anfield. By this time 3 years ago we had signed Reo-Coker and Marlon Harewood, the latter very much being an opportunistic gazumping of a deal taking Harewood to Wigan.

You get the point.

Deep breaths, everything will be OK.

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