Aston Villa probably surprised fans when we confirmed that we had done a deal with Birmingham City that saw Jota and Gary Gardner trade places, and with a £4million fee spoken about most (I think) felt it was an excellent deal for a number of reasons.
Head coach Dean Smith knows Jota extremely well given their time together at Brentford, and for £4million, even if he doesn’t settle at Villa Park, in 12 months his value is at least £6-8million with Premier League football now on CV and it meant we had also maximised Gardner’s worth to at least £2million.
Win, win as I said at the time.
There was some speculation on social media and in our Vital Villa Jota thread that we had in fact struck a straight swap deal and that the £4million talk was purely a speculated valuation from Birmingham’s side – which if true makes the deal even sweeter in our direction given they paid £6million for him.
Whilst that hadn’t obviously been confirmed, this week developments at St Andrew’s took a turn and there might be more than a grain of truth to it.
Sky Sports reported on Thursday that there had been a major falling out between Garry Monk and their Board as he didn’t sanction the Jota deal despite clearly wanting Gardner, yet they approved it anyway. There was also speculation that his budget wouldn’t be boosted because no fee swapped hands.
Given everything that happened in the last derby clash, Jack Grealish and then Monk’s utterly idiotic words after the game (let alone Gardner’s comments), can you blame some fans for revelling in this?
Of course he didn’t want Gardner, do you blame him?! ????????
— Mylooo! (@MyloAVFC) June 13, 2019
— ANNOUNCE MINGS (@EliGhazi) June 13, 2019
I can understand that cause Gary G is bang average
— PRG-AVFC (@PaulRG14) June 13, 2019
NOBODY WANTED GARDNER????
— Villans Opinions (@VillansOpinions) June 13, 2019
So signing Jota for 2m & giving them Gardner for free is the rumored reason for Garry Monk to leave….
Our Gaffer has Small Heath on strings #avfc pic.twitter.com/IoxpTkuXBt
— luke finnegan (@lfinnegan8) June 13, 2019
Anounce Pullis …job done ????????
— Big Kev (@bigkevilla82) June 13, 2019
This Garry Monk fiasco is exactly what happens when there's no communication between the board and the manager — and you happen to swap your second-best player for one of your rival's worst ???? I'm so glad we finally have all the right people in place. #AVFC
— Jon (@JonSheasby) June 13, 2019
