Aston Villa and Yet Another Transfer Saga

First of all before anyone jumps in and comments defending (or attacking) the board, let me just say this article is not about attacking anyone at the club, it is merely designed to ask the question…Why does it take so long for Aston Villa to complete a deal?

Summers are never boring at Villa Park, that is a given (little pun there for Mike Field), but has anyone else noticed that it seems to take Aston Villa a while to complete a sale and/or a signing?

Cast your minds back to when Gareth Barry left us for Manchester City… the deal was completed relatively quickly, wasn’t it? Well no not really, although his signing for Man City had a quick turn around time the deal was completed 12-13 months after Barry had, as Martin O’Neill had put it, ‘intimated’ that he wanted to go.

In more recent times though we have seen the Stewart Downing saga following on the heels of Ashley Young’s quick sale to Manchester United, followed by the waiting days for Shay Given to finally sign and currently Charles N’Zogbia’s ongoing transfer to the club is into its second, soon to be third week.

Yes, yes Wigan only accepted a bid this week but news today suggests Villa are going to wait till next week to complete/confirm the signing of the French winger, that`s on top us waiting days to finally agree a fee with Wigan. So it will have been about three weeks from start to finish.

It does beg the question though, why does it take so long?

Sunderland signed several players in a week (a handful all joined in one day, in fact), and Manchester City had a bid accepted yesterday for Sergio Aguero, he flew in for a medical and has announced on Twitter that he has signed for them all in the space of about 24 hours! Yes ok, its not 100% official yet (at time of writing) but an announcement on their site is imminent.

I might be alone in this but it seems to me that we Villa fans are constantly undergoing an agonising wait to see our new signings holding the Villa shirt whilst leaning on a goalpost at Bodymoor Heath with the huge club crest just out of focus in the background.

Now if you were to ask the General about this he would probably inform you that signing a player is not as easy as walking into Marks and Spencers to purchase a Balti Pie, like he said about appointing a manager – and I am not even going to go into the length of time it takes us to get a manager….

No doubt some will comment below to tell me that we are not alone and bring up the odd example of drawn out transfer sagas in recent years, but my point is Villa ALWAYS seem to be part of a transfer saga one way or the other – there is the odd exception to the ‘rule` of course, the Darren Bent deal was done relatively quickly but you could write a list as long as your arm of players we have been left waiting days/weeks to see holding the claret and blue.

I have a feeling that the signing of Charles N’Zogbia (if it doesn’t fall through (eek!)) will not be the last long drawn out transfer in/out of Villa Park over the next year or two!