It’s fair to say that Ritchie de Laet’s loan spell from Aston Villa to Royal Antwerp hasn’t been the greatest of successes this season.
The 29-year-old former Leicester City right-back made the switch out to Belgium back at the end of January as he sought far greater game time having overcome his long-term injury that in many ways ended his Aston Villa career before it began.
Having joined for an undisclosed fee back in August 2016, his fitness issues have limited him to only seven starting appearances in the Claret and Blue, with a further five showings from the substitutes bench.
Having headed out in January he has taken in 12 starting appearances for them, one showing from the bench and although he’s featured pretty regularly for them in the main, the reason I say it hasn’t been a great loan is we are now looking at his future and it appears he might not be nailed on for a move to them – when the assumption was a quick and easy deal could’ve been open to us.
Promotion back to the Premier League gives us more wriggle room but should the worst happen and we fail in Play-Off promotion, then you would think de Laet is one we’d want to see move on quickly for Financial Fair Play purposes.
Belgian outfit HLN are reporting that Antwerp have deemed him ‘too expensive’ at this moment in time for a deal to happen.
The figures used are a 2million Euro transfer fee with 1.5million Euro wage.
They do posit that this could be a negotiating technique from the club as it states that both parties are interested in extending their association, but the financial terms of the ‘buy clause’ that was included in the loan deal are now considered prohibitive.
My guess is this is agents being agents, football clubs don’t operate loan to buy deals based on what they ‘think’ they might have in the kitty at the end of the year and 2million Euros is hardly prohibitive for top-flight teams around Europe. If that was good in January, it will be now.
The rest is smoke and mirrors and hopefully, de Laet won’t lose out as he seems a thoroughly good egg and with his time on the sidelines, his only focus should be in getting a full season back under his belt again.
With that said, I would doubt Belgium is his only option given his performances for Leicester as plenty of Championship sides would be willing to pick him up I’d imagine.
He left on loan with plenty of well wishes, I’d imagine he’d get the same if he leaves permanently.
The summer Transfers/Rumours Thread – Click Here.
https://twitter.com/de_laet_r/status/955894445592973312
