Dan Bardell exclusive: Ismaila Sarr and Lucas Moura were not right moves for Aston Villa
We’re delighted to welcome The Athletic’s Dan Bardell as our exclusive Aston Villa columnist each week he’ll be giving his views on the biggest talking points at the club…
Ismaila Sarr and Lucas Moura were never really options for Aston Villa on deadline day and would not have been the right moves at this time says Dan Bardell.
After backing out of the move for Watford wide man Sarr just over a week before the transfer window shut (22 August) it was reported in the Daily Mail that the Villans were back at the death to try to get the move done, while the Telegraph had tipped late interest in Spurs winger Lucas.
But with a host of talented attacking options already in the squad at Villa Park but the early season struggles showing that it easier said than done to make a success of that, Bardell feels that adding two wingers that don’t really fit the system would not have helped matters.
He exclusively told Villa News of the Sarr report: “I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that it was ever reignited. I think Villa were concentrating on [Leander] Dendoncker and [Jan] Bednarek for the last days of the window.
“From what I’ve been told Sarr just wanted money that wasn’t within Villa’s wage budget at the moment so they pulled the plug on it. Steven Gerrard himself has said that he didn’t feel it was right for the club.
“We haven’t been a fluid team. We have good attacking players already that we haven’t been getting anything out of so I’m not massively upset by missing out on the Sarr signing, because we don’t play with wingers anyway.
“And we’ve got players like [Leon] Bailey, [Emi] Buendia, [Philippe] Coutinho, [Danny] Ings and [Ollie] Watkins. And obviously we’re struggling to get all them into the team and settle on a combination of three that are in our first choice XI.
“If you then throw another name in there I think it would just add to the confusion at the moment in those positions, although I can acknowledge he is a good player.
“The Athletic were also saying they had a look at Lucas Moura, but again it was never really on the cards. Spurs didn’t make him readily available even though there were whispers.
“We seemed to be approaching a lot of players who were around the 30-year-old mark, and again, I think Lucas Moura coming in would have just added to the confusion.
“He’d have expected to play. Now I say Villa don’t play with any width, maybe they should. Maybe Gerrard doesn’t think he’s got the genuine options in there for the wings. Again, I wouldn’t have been sold on that signing.”
Villa did bring in Dendoncker for relatively low cost to bolster the midfield rotation, while Bednarek came in on loan from Southampton in a necessary move to replace the injured Diego Carlos, but the bulk of the club’s business had been done earlier in the window.
Simply throwing more players at a problem is rarely the answer and once the pieces have been assembled in a squad it has to be down to the manager to find the right combination and the players to start performing.
Now that deadline day has passed there should be a slightly more settled atmosphere at the club and perhaps that can aid in putting together a run of results to push up the table and possibly save the manager’s job.
In other Aston Villa news, Jamie Carragher says former teammate Coutinho has to start performing to save Gerrard.