Matt Maher analysis as Aston Villa continue Premier League winning run
The Aston Villa prediction is headlined by a £33m move as Unai Emery looks to push on in the Premier League
After spending almost a month inside the relegation zone and failing to score against 11 men for 400 Premier League minutes, four successive top flight victories propelled Emery’s side back into the top half of the table and they’re looking strong in the Europa League with two wins out of three despite a setback against across the English Channel against Go Ahead Eagles.
And perhaps most impressively, that turnaround has been achieved with broadly the same core of players as qualified for the Champions League minus Jacob Murphy, with Evann Guessand yet to get off the mark in the Premier League, Jadon Sancho showing positive signs but only having played 53 minutes and Harvey Elliott already fading from view.
So the time is ripe for Villa to look to supplement the squad after receiving another extension on its decline so we dived into the Football Manager 26 Beta, simmed to February and here is its January transfer window prediction:
Youthful emphasis on January transfer window signings
Vakhtang Salia - £6.25 million from Newcastle United - Kicking off a developmental window, Salia joined Newcastle in the summer for an undisclosed fee that’s unlikely to be anything close to the £6.25m that FM26 has Aston Villa paying.
Having only turned 18 at the end of August, Salia is already experienced in senior football but is yet to play for The Magpies’ age group sides let alone the first team so is way off contributing in the Premier League.
Modou Keba Cisse - £4.3m from LASK - If you think dipping into the Austrian Bundesliga is niche, you have no idea what’s coming. At least Cisse plays in the LASK first team… Aston Villa had signed a pre-contract agreement to bring the 20-year-old to B6 next summer but FM26 is clearly in a hurry…
Goncalo Sousa - £1.5m from Porto - Yet to really break through into the first team at Porto, Sousa played 24 games for the B team in Liga Portugal 2 last season and has been a mainstay for the side so far this campaign. Asking the teenager to step up from that to contributing in the Premier League would be a huge ask.
Eduard Spertsyan - £500,000 from Krasnodar - Completing a window that conscientiously wouldn’t blow the socks off any Villa fans’ feet at such a cold time of year in a cost of living crisis,
Spertsyan captains Russian Premier League champions Krasnodar and has been a key player for them since stepping from the academy into the first team, having made 15 goal contributions already this season. He’s also been capped 38 times for Armenia and scored against Ireland in September.
Spertsyan would be the first player to transfer from Russia to the Premier League since West Ham signed Nikola Vlasic in 2021, before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine (though Wilson Isidor joined Sunderland from Zenit Saint Petersburg in Feburary).
Buendia headlines departures
Emi Buendia - £33m to West Ham United - Buendia’s departure would take Aston Villa’s net spend under Emery up to a £31.15m profit in this prediction, a monstrous amount, and breaking even on transfer fees of the Argentina would be a pretty impressive coup at this point. Villa’s former record signing has racked up 600 minutes of football so far this term but only made three starts out of a possible 10 in domestic competitions.
Oliwier Zych - loan to Puskas Akademia - Emery could’ve saved Zych the trouble of relocating to Poland to warm the Rakow Czestochow and had him learn on the training ground behind Emi Martinez who’s probably got more to teach the 21-year-old than Kacper Trelovski, with all due respect. So it makes sense that Villa find Zych a new club who would give him playing time.
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