Asked if such a move would make sense to any of the parties involved, ex-Villa frontman Cascarino - speaking on behalf of Tonybet, whoseWorld Cup Card Collection campaign can see Irish customers win up to €100,000 - toldGOAL: “I've got this bias towards Villa, but they feel like they're being pulled back by the rules of football - your revenue and what you can create and how much you can spend.
“And yet Villa can clearly compete. But if they're only in a position to go, ‘well, we have to sell them to Arsenal now to do our own business’, I find that a bit of a weird place for football. I don't know how we really got there. It feels the most uneven ground now in football where, like Arsenal last year generated I think 770 million, which enables them to be very aggressive.
“We saw the year before Liverpool spent 400 million. They did sell people as well, but they can be incredibly aggressive where anyone who dares to challenge the top six, it feels like you've got handcuffs on. That's the thing I don't like.
“But big players have always moved. They've always moved just generally in football. I did a piece in the paper at the start of the week and was talking about Elliot Anderson going to City. I just said like in 1979, Steve Daley went for 1.4 million from Wolves to Man City. He lasted two years and went to Seattle Sounders after.
“Obviously I don't think that's going to happen to Elliot Anderson, but these big moves, of course Arsenal would want to take a quality player like Morgan Rodgers. I'm just a bit amazed because I want Villa to be competitive as well.”