After a generally well received first press conference, it looks like life at Villa Park is getting off to a predictably busy start for Alex McLeish. During his time in front of the cameras on Monday, he mentioned being inundated with calls from agents offering their players, but it’s the futures of Carlos Cuellar and Michael Bradley that are capturing the headlines first.

Carlos Cuellar

McLeish was quizzed about Cuellar’s future specifically because it’s become fairly open knowledge that Rangers are interested in taking the Spaniard back to Glasgow; Cuellar described such a prospect as “exciting”.

McLeish’s response was interesting; he was obviously non-committal, but mentioned his injury and talked about maybe “having to keep Carlos here and he’ll have to fight for his place next season”. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but I found the wording of “having to keep” him intriguing. I would hope that we want to keep him.

In any case, we’ll get a better idea in the near future as Rangers have now submitted a bid for Cuellar. I think it goes without saying that we’d all like to see him stay, but as I’ve mentioned in the 2011 squad review I’m currently working on, he is about to enter the final year of his contract; we need to either get him signed into a new one or sell now to avoid seeing him leave next summer for nothing.

These are the realities of needing to “trade carefully”, it’s something you’ll find all clubs getting increasingly switched on to as the UEFA Financial Fair Play rules come into sharper focus. It was a significant failure to address the exact same situation with Nigel Reo-Coker and, to a lesser degree, John Carew last summer that led to both players leaving the club at the end of their contracts gratis.

Michael Bradley

There have been enough Michael Bradley posts here lately, so I’ll be brief; the on-again, off-again deal bringing Bradley to Villa Park seems to have reached a conclusion and it’s off. News emerged from Germany early yesterday that the fee had been agreed between the two clubs only for it to be quashed later in the day by McLeish cancelling the deal. Or that’s how the information flowed anyway.

I can’t pretend not to be disappointed, he’s a genuinely decent player who hasn’t really had time to show his best in claret and blue during the three and a half months he was with us. Not everyone will agree though, especially if the opinion on him is based on no more than the 101 minutes he played, but there were also concerns about who was making decisions in the absence of a manager.

That wasn’t something I was concerned about, the deal was obviously set up with a view to make it permanent and there were several months for the management and coaching staff to agree on the decision. Assuming everyone was in agreement before Gerard Houllier left, I don’t see the problem in continuing the deal.

However, it’s McLeish’s prerogative to disagree, he may have someone else in mind or simply wishes to be in control from the outset. Maybe he doesn’t feel that central midfield is something he needs to spend any money on at all. Whatever, it’s his choice and Bradley won’t be a Villa player next season.

2011/12 away shirt and new sponsor

And finally, just a quick note following up on my comment when the new away kit was leaked; it’s been confirmed that the new away shirt will indeed be officially unveiled tomorrow along with the new main sponsor.

Speculation about who that might be naturally abounds, but we’ll find out for sure tomorrow.

I have a sneaky suspicion about HTC myself, but I don’t really have much to base it on. As long as they cough up the dough and it doesn’t look ridiculous, I’m not really all that fussed. It’s just advertising after all.