There are no shortage of complex Aston Villa related situations worth exploring right now, you barely have to look. From the unknown future of the incumbent manager to the past of his litigation happy predecessor coming back like a bad penny. We touched on the Friedel situation this week, which may be taking a turn toward north London, and also his younger compatriot.

We’ve got Nigel Reo-Coker‘s agent bigging him up in every willing media outlet attracting attention from all over Europe and Ashley Young with one foot in Liverpool and the other in Manchester. We’ll get to all of these stories and more, all in good time I’m sure. Unless the world does indeed come to an inexplicable end or my brain explodes from the tedium of it all.

But here’s one that might have flown under the radar a little; what about young Harry Forrester?

You’ll recall that he stepped up to take Nathan Delfouneso’s place in the squad that travelled to Hong Hong last week; something of a last hurrah before his contract expires, ending his Aston Villa career with Barnsley the likely destination.

Ajax

According to one of those Sky Sports “understandings“, Forrester caught the eye of the Ajax coaches while he was busy scoring four goals during the tournament and a move to Holland might now be on the cards. What a fortuitous turn of of events that would be if it pans out!

What’s curious, though, is why we’re letting Forrester go when, as Sky claims, we paid Watford “a seven-figure fee” to bring him to Villa Park three and a half years ago. Actually, I don’t think they’re being entirely accurate, I think it’s more like we paid £250k of an agreed £1m fee, the remaining £750k being due at a later date.

Now, this is just me plucking this out of thin air y’understand, we may well have paid the full fee by now, but is it possible that the trigger for that £750k balance payment might have been renewing his contract this year?

It just seems strange to go to the trouble and expense of bringing him to Villa, where he’s done well in the reserves and broadened his experience in Scotland with Kilmarnock earlier this season, only to call it quits on him at 20 years old.

It’s pure conjecture on my part of course, it could be as simple as he’s just not that good or has a rotten attitude, but I’m far from convinced about either of those. What makes more sense, to me at least, is that Houllier was forced to consider renewing his contract against incurring a sizeable cost for doing so and decided he wasn’t worth the gamble.

I could be way off though, I stress that this is pure guesswork based on very little.

Sell-on clause

Whatever the truth, chances are, Watford will get a cheque from Villa at some point this summer. They reportedly had a sell-on clause in the £9.65m deal that brought Ashley Young to B6, entitling them to 15% of anything above that amount in any deal taking him elsewhere.

As an example, a £15m deal would net Watford a roughly £800k sized slice of the pie. If he does go, we won’t be the only ones hoping that he goes for more than that then.

Ash’s situation isn’t completely certain, of course, but Forrester has now left the club and I hope it works out for him wherever he ends up. And if he really does have the option of going to Ajax, I’d say grab it with both hands!

[Photo Credit: Jason Langston]