Inter Milan reportedly have a crucial Aston Villa star on their radar and it’s believed the Villans could let him leave for a price lower than what would be expected given his importance.
Villa are not having the type of season they’d have expected so far. In the last two campaigns, they finished within the Premier League’s top six – fourth and then sixth.
This term, after 10 games they find themselves 11th, with four wins, three draws and three losses – a fairly middling return.
A partial reason for their slump is the lack of form shown by Ollie Watkins, who’s on one goal so far after 16 last season, and the rest of the attack are struggling to pick up the slack.
In defence, things are still solid – Villa have conceded just one goal per game through their 10 games so far. It will be a concern, then, that their most important defender is the subject of interest.
According to a report from Italian outlet L’Interista, Ezri Konsa is on Inter Milan’s radar.
The report labels Konsa one of the Premier League’s best centre-backs, which would be a fair assessment, and they state his value is rising ‘month after month’ so it seems very unlikely that the figure Villa would reportedly accept for him – €35million (£30.8m) is correct.
Indeed, an England international who has played very consistently for both Villa and England of late is surely not going to be so cheap.
The report also mentions interest from Liverpool, while Manchester City have recently been linked with Konsa’s signature.
Konsa is a pillar of the Villa side and Unai Emery cannot afford to lose him. While he has other centre-backs he can call upon – Pau Torres, Tyrone Mings and Victor Lindelof – that Konsa has missed just one of England’s last seven games proves how important a player he is.
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Per SofaScore, the Villa centre-back makes the most accurate passes of any player at his club this season, so is clearly an important asset in keeping possession.
Of those, there are 0.5 key passes per game and one long ball per game, so Konsa is also of use in transitioning from defence to attack.
He is also one of the main reasons Villa have conceded such few goals this term. Only Mings (five) has made more clearances than his four this term for Villa, with the pair sniffing out danger and getting it away from their area.
Should Villa lose Konsa, they would be losing one of their very most important players.
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