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Nobody Is For Sale – Music To My Ears – Bruce Discusses Player Sales

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Manager Steve Bruce was delighted to see Aston Villa end their pre-season game schedule with victory over Dynamo Dresden on Saturday afternoon.

A brace of goals from youngster Andre Green saw us battle back from behind following goalkeeper Jed Steer’s first half oversight, and at the end of 90 minutes we’d secured a 2-1 victory.

Having dealt with the game elsewhere and various other bits, I thought Bruce’s words after the game deserved their own piece so nobody missed it.

“The one thing that the pair of them have said is that nobody is for sale.”

Now, we all know there is a Financial Fair Play hole – the only thing nobody is sure on is how much of a hole we have as the media lurch from one catastrophic headline claim to the next. We also know there are means and ways of solving that hole in a way that doesn’t mean we have to instantly lurch to quickfire transfers – if we show a bit of intelligence and don’t panic.

Bruce’s words also don’t mean there won’t be sales, it simply sends the message that following our takeover under Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens we have choices now and don’t need to hock the family silver simply to temporarily solve cash flow issues.

But it’s a strong statement to make with regards to Jack Grealish, James Chester and Jonathan Kodjia in particular given Bruce’s earlier interviews where he confirmed Dr Tony Xia’s words that you’d see us at car boot sales and local markets as we tried to keep the lights on.

“The one thing that the pair of them have said is that nobody is for sale. That’s music to my ears. We don’t want to lose our best players. We all know in football that unfortunately these things happen. But we will now be doing our utmost to make sure these things do not happen and not let them go anywhere. The new owners coming in has helped. Let’s just hope the new owners can help get Villa back to where they should be. It’s going to take time but hopefully we can now look forward.”

Bruce also confirmed that a striker was the priority given our frontline have all gone under this pre-season with injuries and it was suggested that travelling fans to Dresden saw linked goalkeeper Andre Moreira amongst the group at the game.

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