LEE PAYNE

Tag: villa

  • Aston Villa!? Norwich City are taking a risk selling Emi Buendia

    On Saturday, the news broke that Emi Buendia would be sold by Norwich City.

    Less than a month after the end of the season, they were no longer rumours. My first reaction was disappointment. I was desperate for Norwich to keep their most creative player, believing him to be crucial to our hopes of staying in the Premier League.

    My second reaction was surprise at his destination. This brilliant, skillful, tenacious midfielder with most of his career still ahead of him. One of the best players Norwich have ever had, one who can make things happen and do things that other players just can’t. One who has just made it into the Argentina squad for the first time, surely to hang around for a long time to come. His new club? Aston Villa.

    I felt sure that, with Premier League football now on offer at Carrow Road, were Buendia to leave it would be to a club in a European competition. When Arsenal (who will not play in any of the three European competitions next season) were touted as his next club, I said he could do better than them – and I meant it.

    Buendia is rough around the edges, not the complete package by any means. He can win games on his own but if he’s having an off day he can quickly get frustrated. When that happens, he can be a bit of a passenger. Also, he tends to be so much better than his opponents that the only way they can stop him is by kicking him around the pitch. Occasionally, Buendia will react to this harsh treatment and more than once got himself sent off.

    The talent is undoubtedly there, however, and I am convinced he will reach the very top. Which is why I am rather surprised that he has chosen mid-table Villa, and their not exactly inspiring manager, as the next step in his career. Having said that, I wish him every success (apart from when he plays against us) and I am grateful for the three years we had him.

    From Norwich’s point of view, Buendia’s sale has come relatively early in the summer and the club have plenty of time to invest the transfer fee in new players to replace him. It’s a sizeable fee, too. City have an irritating policy of labelling all of their transfer dealings as ‘undisclosed’ fees, but Aston Villa are reportedly paying an initial £33m with another £5m potentially coming if certain, though unspecified, performance criteria are met. Should he move from Villa to the big club I expected him to in the first place, Norwich will benefit once again from a 10% sell-on fee.

    This makes the 24-year-old comfortably Norwich’s biggest sale. Until 2018, the club had never sold a player for £20m or more. They have since sold three – James Maddison to Leicester, Ben Godfrey to Everton and now Buendia. In an interview with the BBC last week, sporting director Stuart Webber said that if the club sold one of their top players the figure is ‘probably going to start with a number three in front of it’ and ‘we’re really relaxed on that front’. He has been true to his word.

    It is reassuring that this doesn’t appear to have come as a shock to the people in power at Carrow Road. While I was hoping they would stick their heels in, refuse to sell Buendia and build the team around him to take on the Premier League – like Villa did with Jack Grealish – the relaxed response from Webber suggests that new faces are already being lined up. I thought it would be worth our while spending a fair bit convincing Buendia to stay for just one more season, and that it would be much easier to replace Max Aarons if the club needed a big sale. For the size of the fee, we could potentially buy three players to replace the one we have sold. Speaking of Grealish, I imagine Villa must be expecting to sell him this summer now and have bought Buendia to take his place.

    I do think Norwich have taken a risk in selling their star man. Buendia created an incredible number of chances in the Premier League last time, considering he was in the side that finished bottom. It will be difficult to find someone with as much creativity in midfield as him. It’s hard for me not to believe that our chances of staying up next season have taken a hit. However, if we’ve learned one thing in the four years since Webber and Farke took over, it’s that they know what they are doing and to question their judgement often leaves you looking a fool.

  • Beckham’s World Cup heartbreak means he must rethink his retirement plans

    David Beckham last night, going down in a heap after suffering Achilles damage that will force him out of the World Cup. The injury could mean the end of his 115-cap England career.

    Laying in bed this morning, semi-conscious minutes after being woken up by the BBC Radio Norfolk newsreader, I felt a sudden sadness when I learned that David Beckham would not be going to the World Cup. I felt sorry for him. He never strikes me as being the most intelligent of people – a friend of mine at school used to love telling me Beckham once answered an interview question with the phrase ‘I wasn’t teached that way’ – but then he doesn’t need to be. Not in the academic sense anyway. From what I have seen of him on the TV, Beckham is a genius with a football. He is unrivalled when it comes to crossing or passing the ball. Not to mention his mesmerising free kicks, works of art in accuracy and precision. Some say his legs had gone, but an England squad with David Beckham in it is better than one without.

    Hard work is something that Beckham doesn’t shy away from either. He was Sven’s England captain, but Steve McLaren had the guts to leave him out of the team (others might argue this was just another of McLaren’s misguided actions). ‘Becks’ earned his way back in, and was it not for his pin-point crosses England’s Wembley defeat to Croatia that made certain of their no-show at Euro 2008 would have been even more embarrassing.

    The much more masterful Fabio Capello omitted Beckham from some of his squads too, wary of the quality of football the ex-Manchester United midfielder was participating in at the Los Angeles Galaxy. Far from admitting defeat as he approached his mid-30s, Beckham was prepared to strain his club relations for the sake of his country, organising a spring loan move to AC Milan. Don’t let the cynics make you believe that this was purely because his Spice Girl wife Victoria wanted a taste of fashionable Italy. Beckham moved to Serie A to keep his World Cup dream alive.

    Now into his second spell at San Siro, it hasn’t been perfect for the 34-year-old. He has never been the leading star, often being forced to settle for substitute appearances, but when he came on Beckham still oozed an aura of class. This was a player not to be taken lightly. This was a player who commanded respect. In the last month he was put into the shade by the future of English football itself, Wayne Rooney, but on current form anyone would be. It wasn’t as much of a ‘that was the old, this is the new’ showing as some pundits are warbling on about. He had his own doubts about his chances of boarding the plane for South Africa this summer, but the general consensus was he would be there, and he had earned the right to be there.

    It turns out, unfortunately, that these talking points are ultimately trivial. Last night Beckham broke down playing for Milan against Chievo. His manager Leonardo said the Londoner ‘knew immediately’ that his Achilles tendon was torn. TV pictures confirmed this, showing Beckham signalling a tear to the bench. Today, the injury that means he won’t be fit for the World Cup is headline news here, and heartbreaking news for Beckham himself.

    Who will replace David Beckham?

    James Milner, of Aston Villa, is my ideal choice to fill David Beckham's boots.

    Not only does Beckham have to rethink his plans after last night’s events, so does England manager Fabio Capello ahead of the World Cup, and possibly for after the tournament as well. Thankfully, there are a number of options. The obvious choice, Aaron Lennon of Tottenham, is facing his own injury battle and should he be fit, he might not be match-ready for the immense pressure and intense pace World Cup finals matches bring. Another possibility, one utilised by Capello previously, is Manchester City’s Shaun Wright Phillips, though his stuttered contract talks with the club he loves have been playing on his mind of late. Personally, I would punt for Aston Villa’s versatile James Milner, who has had a season to remember as one of the outstanding players in Martin O’Neill’s strong outfit. Still quite young, Milner’s career has seen him face tough times at Leeds United and Newcastle United, so he is more mature than most. A talented and strong player, not afraid to try a long shot, Milner looks to me to be the ideal midfielder to fill the sizeable void left by Beckham’s absence.

    Questions have now moved on to whether or not this would signal the end of David Beckham’s career. As I type, he is undergoing surgery in Finland to correct the injury. This would have been Beckham’s fourth World Cup – no Englishman has played at that many tournaments. It seems he will have to settle for three after all, a record to be proud of – only Bobby Moore and Peter Shilton have also played in as many World Cups for England as that. The swiftness with which Beckham has headed under the knife suggests he has not given up on his glittering career yet.

    Not that I am at all qualified to tell him what to do, but if David Beckham asked me for his advice, I would tell him this (and this has come about after some considerable thought). Retire from international football and come home for a swansong. Surgeons appear to be confident that they can get him playing football again. That’s good. I had convinced myself, prior to this awful news, that Beckham would draw the curtains on his career as a whole after this summer’s World Cup. Now he won’t be going, that would be a bad idea. He wouldn’t want it to end like this. It is important that England move on after the summer, though, and their plans in order to progress simply cannot include a veteran. Draw a line under your international career, Becks, and do it before you disappoint yourself trying to make it work again when you are fit.

    It would then be up to Beckham to sign off in the best possible way. Come home, back to play in front of the people who love you (the same people who hated you in 1998). I highly doubt Manchester United would take such a step to bring him back. Certainly not with Ferguson in charge. That’s just not how they work. It is without doubt, though, that Beckham could still cut it in the Premier League. How about at one of the clubs currently jostling for the coveted fourth place? Tottenham Hotspur? Aston Villa? Everton? A couple of seasons, dazzling performances, glory achieved before taking a step back as one of this country’s greats. I don’t want to go too far forward, but just in time for a cushy media job at Euro 2012?

    Think about it, Becks. You know it makes sense.