Talks with player over Aston Villa transfer, meeting over price ‘in the coming days’

 

Aston Villa’s problem with Jordan Amavi is the same as their pleasure with Jordan Amavi… he’s good.

The 22 year old former Nice left back is too good for the Championship, and his high rating before moving to Aston Villa wasn’t tarnished by relegation. Injured for much of the season, after being hurt whilst with France’s U21s, Amavi escaped a lot of the Villa disaster and remains a wanted man.

Steve Bruce would clearly love to keep Amavi, as Aston Villa work themselves towards some kind of battle to get promoted at the first attempt.

Marseille, newly monied with a new owner, have other ideas, and L’Equipe say Andoni Zubizarreta met twice recently with Amavi’s representatives. Zubi, formerly Barcelona’s chief recruiter, can no doubt be very persuasive and if there was no interest from the Villa player’s camp then there wouldn’t have been two meetings.

Amavi has repeatedly spoken well about wanting to help Aston Villa, and being part of a Steve Bruce team going for promotion, but Zubi may well have turned his head.

The French newspaper say if Amavi is to leave Aston Villa in the winter window he’d prefer an English option, with two unnamed Premier League clubs at the window. To combat that, it’s stated Marseille would have to ‘get out the chequebook’.

A meeting to ‘further define the amounts’ is set to take place ‘in the coming days’.