This feels like a recurring theme but here I am (again) apologising for my absence. Thankfully the lovely Miss Montesano has been helping to keep things moving as I stay inundated under a pile of work that will result in something worth £50m being delivered. Sadly for Aston Villa, it won’t be a player.
Anyway, with enough about me for the time being, I should turn to what the focus of this site is supposed to be. No, not curried goat, Russian poetry, or how to get drunk in Birmingham, but the mighty Aston Villa.
As we are all aware, things have been relatively quiet though the signing of Alexsandr Tonev, and links to other players have been keeping us busy. In this football-less desert we currently operate in, there are no games to dissect, no players to lambast, and no arrows from my diagrams to give everyone instant eye-strain.
That in itself poses the challenge any football site suffers from during close season – what exactly to cover. I could, like our very own Carrie Bradshaw, by which I mean Kris if anyone was wondering, create a story of surviving the Big Apple – Kris is our Carrie, or so I would suggest. That is unless some other of our readers are dressing up in women’s clothing and stalking the streets of New York trying to get by. If you are doing so, please at least try and shave.
Anyway, the challenges we face is what to talk about. Thankfully the comment volume on Aston Villa Life shows that there is always something to talk about, even if it isn’t Villa related. If I was Simon (long term readers will understand), I’d be hugely angry that people weren’t talking about football. Me personally – I’m just glad we keep our readers entertained.
So as I ramble after a few bottles of Tsingtao, I should cut to something relevant, likely Villa related. This close season is a pre-cursor to a potentially different season ahead. Between increased TV revenue, the progression of a Paul Lambert upheaval, and the final entities of the Martin O’Neill era disappearing, there is a lot to look forward to.
Already we have seen links to the likes of Younes Belhanda, though I remain unconvinced simply because the figures bandied about are high. Not high in a Premier League sense, but in an Aston Villa sense. £12m on a player? In this era? Unlikely, especially when one considers the £7m we spent on Christian Benteke.
Which isn’t to say Villa can’t spend £12m on a player, but rather that it seems strange that £12m would go on an attacking midfielder. Maybe it would – I’m not suggesting it is impossible – but rather it seems a strange call when the player is linked with AC Milan, Inter, Galatasaray, and Atletico, as well as fellow Premier League teams Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur.
Logically a player like Belhanda looks like a cheaper-to-run version of Stephen Ireland, arguably a good trade if Ireland can be offloaded, and cheaper in the long term. Will it happen though? I guess we’ll find out.
So beyond the possible purchase of a player who may do us all a great favour, things seem quiet. That said, they always do before the storm. Maybe this is a new beginning, even if we are only in the early days of the close season.
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