Aston Villa only have themselves to blame for Marco Asensio failure after damning Monchi reveal
Aston Villa failed to secure the permanent signing of Marco Asensio during the summer transfer window.
The Spanish star made a significant impact at Villa Park during his loan stint in the second half of last season, and it seemed highly likely that he would make his move from PSG a permanent one ahead of this campaign.
Asensio was heavily linked with Aston Villa on several occasions, but they were ultimately unable to get a deal over the line, and he has since joined Fenerbahce instead.
It was a difficult summer for the second city outfit in the transfer market, and their inability to land the winger was undoubtedly one of their biggest failings.
Monchi expected Marco Asensio to join Aston Villa permanently
The dust has now settled on Monchi’s departure from Aston Villa, and the former President of Football Operations has been shedding light on events in B6 of late.
The 57-year-old has been speaking to Spanish outlet Eldes Marque, and has now revealed that he expected Asensio to join Villa on a permanent basis in the summer.
“I thought he was going to end up at Villa Park, which was the goal,” he said.
“But in the end it didn’t happen, mainly for financial reasons, because PSG were being tougher on us. And well, Marco was worried; he was nervous. He saw that the transfer market was going on, and it was nearly closing.
“He opted for Fenerbahce. It’s true that I thought, we all thought, that he could end up at Villa Park, because he had also had six very good months previously.”
Monchi’s suggestion of the way that the botched deal played out is actually fairly damning towards him and the rest of the recruitment team at Villa.
It was not merely enough for them to assume that their efforts would eventually result in the transfer going through, purely because the player had enjoyed a successful loan there already.
The implications of their PSR constraints were evident across a number of failed transfer pursuits, but in Asensio’s case, they didn’t really push hard enough to get the deal over the line.
It didn’t need a significant transfer fee to secure his services, and with that in mind, Villa will surely be regretting the way they let the situation play out.
Marco Asensio would have been a better signing than Evann Guessand
Evann Guessand has had a slow start at Aston Villa since they splashed out £26million to sign him in the summer, and Asensio would surely have been a better option on the wing in hindsight.
Guessand is still searching for his first Premier League goal contribution after six league appearances, and he simply doesn’t have the proven top-level experience that Asensio would have brought.
The former Real Madrid star has won countless titles over the years and has regularly produced huge moments on the biggest stage in the Champions League.
That is the calibre of player that they need to be targeting if they want to reach that stage, and they cannot continue to allow their targets to slip away from them.
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