After the utter embarrassment that was Aston Villa’s trip to Selhurst Park to face Crystal Palace at the weekend, it was a busy start to the week for head coach Steven Gerrard and he sanctioned two further departures and reportedly pulled the plug on a bizarre, new, speculated signing.
First off on Monday, following plenty of speculation suggesting Bertrand ‘The Conundrum’ Traore was already in Turkey, the club confirmed he had now signed for Istanbul Basaksehir FK for the remainder of the 2022/23 campaign.
Good luck to Bertrand Traoré, who has joined İstanbul Başakşehir on a season-long loan. 🤝
— Aston Villa (@AVFCOfficial) August 22, 2022
The 26-year-old Burkina Faso international made a reported £17 million switch from Lyon back in September of 2020, and he’s gone to make 33 starts, with 15 substitute showings – returning eight goals – but it’s not unfair to suggest his time with us has been utterly inconsistent. An absolute passenger in most games with a perceived lack of work rate that infuriated everyone, yet an absolute magical demon in other matches where he was a joy to watch on the attack, and a constant thorn doing his defensive duties.
But another signing that never truly made sense as we haven’t played with proper wingers for years.
On Monday evening, we also saw the loan departure of centre half Kortney Hause. Which makes perfect sense given the injury to Diego Carlos and Gerrard’s intimation in interviews that a new signing with only two professional games of experience in the country is such a massive loss, akin to losing the best defender at the club, so we reduce our defensive ranks even further.
Wishing all the best to @Kortney_30, who has joined Watford on a season-long loan. 🤝
— Aston Villa (@AVFCOfficial) August 22, 2022
Hause making the switch to Vicarage Road and Watford does suggest the recent speculation linking us with a deal for Ismaila Sarr (and maybe a double loan deal with Hause and Cameron Archer) was kind of on the money. It’s been reported that we agreed a £25 million fee with them, but the deal broke down over the structure of the deal and the 24-year-old’s eventual personal terms.
Again, given we don’t play with wingers this speculation made absolutely no sense anyway.
https://twitter.com/VillaAnalytics/status/1561747796545396738
Maybe Gerrard tries to get a system that gets the best out of the squad first before signing more square pegs for round holes? Just an idea like? Paging Mr Purslow, paging Mr Lange?? Any responsibility going in that direction?
Another day in the wonderful world of Steven Gerrard’s (yawn) Aston Villa.
Yes I’m afraid it going from bad to worse, I’m very surprised at SG I really thought he would make it, but now I have serious doubts. Seems to be a massive shambles from top to bottom, do you think the Sarr debacle was just a tactic to divert fans attention away from our disaster at Palace, and I don’t like the way that young Archer is being treated, first he’s staying then he’s going now we have no idea, wouldn’t surprise me if he opts for a transfer.
Sorry for the negativity but if we loose to Bolton and or West Ham the writings on the wall for Gerrard. The whole situation is embarrassing and not acceptable.