The club are one of twelve Championship teams pursuing Liverpool winger Harry Wilson, according to the Liverpool Echo. The Welsh international has signed a new contract with the Reds in recent days but with the Premier League side in talks with Stoke’s Xherdan Shaqiri, he is likely to depart on loan this summer to get more first-team football.
His record of seven goals and four assists in 14 Championship games last campaign shows he is more than capable of making his mark in the second tier of English football, but as the Birmingham Mail point out, there is one major stumbling block which I think will stop any move to Villa Park from taking place.
Liverpool have got into the habit of agreeing loan spells that stipulate penalties if their young players don’t play enough games. Bristol City reportedly had to pay £500,000 because they didn’t play Ryan Kent regularly enough when he spent six months at Ashton Gate in the second half of last season.
In the financial situation we are in, that is not something we could afford to take on. Wilson’s talent is undoubted, but I think we would be just as well served keeping faith with our young players like Andre Green to fill the gaps in our first-team squad.
Loan players can work well as we saw with Robert Snodgrass, Sam Johnstone and Lewis Grabban, but they can also fall flat, like with Axel Tuanzebe, and having the additional pressure to play them due to financial penalties, even if they are not playing well, would not sit well with me, and probably for that matter with Steve Bruce.
In my view, despite the talents of players like Wilson, Ben Woodburn and Sheyi Ojo at Liverpool, we should steer well clear of these types of loans. We have enough issues on the financial front without having some additional headaches to worry about.
