‘Question marks there’: Ex-England striker unconvinced by Aston Villa transfer business

A former Premier League striker and England international has slammed Aston Villa’s activity in the summer transfer window.

Arsenal legend Alan Smith is not at all convinced by the work of Monchi, Damian Vidagany and Unai Emery in the market and has questioned Villa’s transfer deadline day deals.

Smith considered Villa’s poor start to the Premier League season and correctly identified the gloomy mood around the club in recent weeks, going on to criticise their summer business.

“It just looks flat at Villa at the moment, doesn’t it?” Smith said to BestBettingSites.co.uk this week.

“I think as a player, you want to see additions even if it might affect your position, you want to see quality coming into the club.

‘The alarm bells will be ringing’

“That’s not happened at Villa and it’s been an underwhelming start, to say the least, and to get beaten 3-0 by Crystal Palace at home, you know, the alarm bells will be ringing.”

Smith expressed major doubts about Villa’s deadline day acquisitions, warning that their business was not of the ‘outstanding’ variety on Monday.

“You look at [Victor] Lindelöf and [Jadon] Sancho, and I don’t know, [there are] question marks there,” said the former England centre-forward. “It’s not something that’s going to get the fans excited, I don’t think. So we’ll see how that pans out.

“Can [Sancho] find some form? I mean, he didn’t at Chelsea, did he? Didn’t do much at Chelsea. I saw probably his best game; it was at Bournemouth. He came off the bench and set up a goal. So yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know with Sancho.

“There’s a lot for him to prove… [Marcus] Rashford had a pick-up in form. He did contribute. So, can Sancho do something similar? We’ll see on that but I’ve got my doubts.”

The Manchester United winger was perhaps the biggest surprise among Villa’s new signings. Evann Guessand fits the way the club need to go about things and Marco Bizot is an adequate understudy for a modest fee.

Lindelöf fills a specific gap and Harvey Elliott, in many ways the club’s most significant transfer in or out this summer, is a signing loads of clubs would have loved to have made.

Sancho’s promise is less clear. He quickly fell out of favour at Old Trafford and lost his place in the England squad. He built his reputation in the Bundesliga with Borussia Dortmund and enjoyed a happy return on loan, and his temporary spell with Chelsea in the 2024/25 season met with mixed reviews.

Smith, clearly, was not very impressed, but the hope at Villa Park will be that Emery can find a way to extract the best from a highly talented player who’s only 25 years of age and who plays in a position where Villa lost a key man in Jacob Ramsey.

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