Aston Villa Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours Thread 2025/26

Apparently McGinns goal last night was first Villa player World Cup goal since Houghton against Italy.

You are correct and they are wrong. Fair shout.

Requested due to the stadium work apparently

Probably nothing meaningful, just a bit of extra leeway

I think if Bowen had played to his potential West Ham might have scraped enough points to stay up but his recent form was awful. Danny Dyer saying he should have gone to the World Cup was comical. Villa as a club are the right profile for him but it would only work if Emery could get him back to his best.

I think in all the time Emery has been here the only older player he has spent any sort of large fee on is Abraham. Next is probably Barkley who was about 5M and Villa got decent value out of him.

Biggest signings have been young, Onana, Diaby, Torres, Maatsen, Malen and even Guessand. Add in Rogers and the squad value has probably kept going up relative to purchase price despite the depressed spending.

Wilson off to Leeds now so that is an older player we were heavily linked going elsewhere. Bowen talk isprobably based on nothing.

There is only so many situations like the current Martinez one that the club can afford.

Like I’m not saying this in terms of a figurative situation, you literally can’t afford to have a squad full of good players all staying with you the whole way through their prime, and then having no money to replace them with and feeling trapped because you’re only getting offered pennies on the dollar for a highly paid player in decline.

After Rogers, Onana is probably the only chance Villa will have to generate the funds to sign the squad that will be needed in 2/3 years time. There are no luxury funds at all for signing players that will be good for a couple of years and then need replacing with no money to do so.

Chelsea and United have that luxury. Villa absolutely do not. The FFP funds just are not there.

Of course. But that isn’t happening either. The majority of the team now is gonna give you a few good quality years and then you’re in the Martinez situation.

You look at Cash, Konsa, Digne, Pau, Tielemans, McGinn, Buendia, Watkins. All of them are likely to stay at Villa until they are no longer of the required quality to start for Villa. You won’t get very much money for them at that point and they’ll likely be on big contracts for whatever is left on their deals.

I am not for a minute talking about rebuilding the squad and shipping the good players out. Absolutely keep going with it unless you get offers you can’t refuse. But you can’t keep adding to the list with more players who will end up that way.

If Villa get 100 million for Rogers, you genuinely need to be filling 3 of those future holes with it. The money isn’t coming from elsewhere. The conversation is the same around FFP in every window, and realistically Villa will not be able to qualify for CL every year without fail regardless.

Turning your nose up to Bowen, surprised at that. He has been great at West Ham. Last season, he was carrying a few team mates and the captaincy role probably didn't suit him. He was very much on the short list for the WC.

Personally, I hope he goes no where near Villa, speaking as a West Ham fan

It’s how the team Emery mostly inherited that has had so much success was mostly built.

Martinez was signed at 28 for 20 million. Matty Cash was signed at 23 for 16 million.
Pau Torres was signed at 26 for 31.5 million

Konsa was signed at 22 for 12 million

Digne was signed at 29 for 25 million

Kamara was signed at 25 for free
Tielemans was signed at 26 for free

McGinn was signed at 24 for 2.5 million

Onana was signed at 23 for 50 million

Rogers was signed at 22 for 15 million

Watkins was signed at 24 for 30 million

That’s the recruitment strategy that the success was built on like. Obviously Villa can pay a little bit more now (moreso on wages). It’s also much safer to sign players who have already achieved success. The problem is that Villa cannot afford to do so.

Villa correctly don’t want to be a selling club unless they absolutely have to like Grealish/Rogers. That’s an absolutely fine strategy and you’ll get a decade of quality out of some of those lads above. But what you won’t get is the transfer fee to sign their replacement with.

All true and most of the Villa signings were made in years where the club made fairly substantial losses overall in transfers including on poor signings who left for less than was paid, something the club cannot do now because of the UEFA restrictions. Making big trading losses has been less of a problem under Emery although partly due to the restrictions.

Probably also true that Villa’s recent success was built more on paying a massive wage to get a quality coaching team to get the best out of existing players than on the transfer strategy, including the strategy prior to Emery. Once players get established at a higher level a club can look to sell or pay them more to keep them, new contracts makes the player similar to free signings, cost more in wages but less in Amortisation. A lot of clubs are concentrating on very young signings now for huge fees so selling established 27-28 year olds can offer poor value compared to the on field contribution. Buying to sell probably means buying at 21 or under and selling a few years later and allowing other clubs to get their best years.

I'm not sure of Bowen's preferred position. If he likes to play a wide role then that's good, but if he prefers a central role, is he good enough to dislodge Watkins? And if not, he's not good enough to start

Aston Villa have been fined €22.5million for breaching UEFA’s Squad Cost Rules (SCR) — but will only pay it if their compliance with the regulations takes a downturn.

Selling the only 2 players under the age of 23 to play any meaningful minutes last season would be absolutely terrifying stuff.