With weekend disappointment at Wembley for Aston Villa, the speculation conveyor belt has certainly kicked into gear this week.
Gone are stories and speculation like:
Villa Make Preparations For Promotion With Interest In £26m Rated Malian Ace
Instead, we can now get used to talk of players not returning for next season, the true impact of Financial Fair Play and what Villa’s Plan B was for life in the Championship with Keith Wyness previously admitting that we had formulated two plans to cover all eventualities.
The Birmingham Mail are one of many to suggest that John Terry has already said his goodbyes to the group following the Fulham game.
Terry’s option at B6 only came into play should promotion be achieved and that is now null and void for the 37-year-old. Having given us the the year, sense would say we are in pole position to keep him but then we come to finances and the likes of the MLS, China or even the spoken about player/coach role elsewhere could now be financially more rewarding to him at this stage.
It’s being reported that as the players left Wembley Terry told his colleagues to ‘stay in touch’ but a lengthy hug with manager Steve Bruce purportedly told it’s own story. Bruce has since explained.
“The discussions over the next few weeks will be with John to see what he wants. He had an option if we went up. We had to balance the books last summer to get loans and frees. It is something that has happened over the last two windows and something they are going to have to get used to. There’s going to have to be a change of course but we’ll ask those questions in the next few weeks.”
Hopes were high ahead of the game and the announcement that Alan Hutton would finally be offered a new deal was a testament to that, but this will obviously impact on the kind of deal we can give him as well would be my guess.
What it means for Sam Johnstone’s future is open to debate, but with the expected financial hit we now take, it probably ends the talk of Robert Snodgrass returning for next season.
This isn’t going to be the only fallout – we’re just going to have to ride with it for a bit until things become clearer.
