View: Aston Villa must cash in on Anwar El Ghazi while they still can
Aston Villa are in a state of needing to sell players before they can go out and buy more but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
The very early summer signings of Boubacar Kamara, Diego Carlos, Philippe Coutinho and Robin Olsen have eaten a large chunk of Steven Gerrard’s transfer kitty for this window but there are more holes in the squad that need filling.
Luckily for Gerrard, he has some players within his side already that need to be shipped out as soon as possible and one name, in particular, should be axed at all costs.
That is Dutch winger Anwar El Ghazi who spent the second half of the 2021-22 campaign on loan at Everton where he played just twice for Frank Lampard’s Toffees and now he faces a very uncertain future.
He has just one year left on his current deal at Villa Park, according to Transfer Markt, and has already seen fellow winger Mahmoud Trezeguet leave the club for a move to Trabzonspor.
El Ghazi may just be the next man on the Aston Villa chopping block because they might not get another chance to sell the 27-year-old for a transfer fee before clubs can approach him on a pre-contract agreement.
With Coutinho, Emi Buendia, Ollie Watkins and some of the young stars at the club already, there appears to be no room at the inn for El Ghazi anymore so we have absolutely no reason to keep him around, taking up our wage budget.
At least with the sales of Matt Targett and Trezeguet, we have some wiggle room to make some smaller transfers where necessary but to make the moves we need to, people must go and El Ghazi has to be the first out the door.
In other Aston Villa news, Targett’s replacement at left-back is close to arriving in the Midlands as Fabrizio Romano shares the latest.