Aston Villa youngster Finley Thorndike joins Birmingham City
Birmingham City have signed Aston Villa youngster Finley Thorndike just one year after he signed for the Villans from West Bromwich Albion.
This is the 20-year-old’s third cross-city move in the Midlands as a result but he is yet to make his senior debut, instead being confined to playing academy football throughout his career so far.
He joins Villa’s sworn rivals Birmingham on a free transfer after his one-year deal at Villa Park expired on Thursday (30 June) but he did play consistently for the club’s Under-23s last season.
The 20-year-old made 18 appearances in the Premier League 2 with three goals to his name and also scored in the Papa John’s Trophy for the Villa Under-23s against Charlton Athletic in the second round.
One to go
If Thorndike is hoping to be contracted to all four major West Midlands clubs then he is very close to completing his dream.
It takes a very brave soul to jump from West Brom to Aston Villa and then onto Birmingham and if he ends up at Wolves in a year’s time then he may well become the villain of the city.
From our perspective though, Thorndike was never going to play for us without an enormous injury crisis or COVID-19 outbreak within the senior side so we couldn’t really keep him on any longer than originally agreed.
On the surface at least, it looks like a failed transfer after such a short space of time and you have to ask questions of the Villa decision-makers as to why we bothered signing someone for just one year and never playing him.
That was a total waste of time in all honesty unless we really believed he would go on and make an impact in the first team but if that was the case, he’d have been given a longer contract initially.
In other Aston Villa news, Steven Gerrard is close to selling one of our fringe players and we’ll be getting a seven-figure transfer fee for him too.