Aston Villa one step closer to cleaning up the transfer mess which contributed to PSR issue.
Aston Villa transfer latest and an update on Philippe Coutinho, who last played for the club almost two years ago.
Playmaker Philippe Coutinho is set to leave Aston Villa almost two years after his last appearance for the club, bringing an end to a stay at the club which has seen an extraordinarily minimal return on the club’s investment.
Coutinho joined initially on loan from Barcelona in January 2022, hooking up with former Liverpool teammate Steven Gerrard. The club saw fit to make the move a permanent arrangement the following summer after that loan spell in which the Brazilian blew hot and cold. It was thought he was handed a contract – four years long – worth around £125,000 a week.
Coutinho has failed to justify the money Villa forked out to acquire him, though; along with injury issues, he struggled to make much of an impact under Gerrard’s successor Unai Emery, who turned to the likes of Leon Bailey, Jacob Ramsey and Emiliano Buendia after taking over.
He has since had loan spells in Qatar and, currently, Brazil, where he is back playing at former club Vasco da Gama. Coutinho joined last year, has played regularly, contributed in the final third and appears to have settled back into familiar surroundings without too many issues. Indeed the club’s hierarchy have been keen to retain him beyond this loan spell.
With Brazil’s season running from winter to winter, this current loan is due to end midway through Vasco’s calendar, but the club have been confident that they can keep hold of Coutinho, who only has a year left of his Villa contract at any rate. While another loan was possible, the Sunday Mirror reported over the weekend that a severance could occur.
Villa could terminate Coutinho’s contract and allow him to join Vasco on a free transfer, cutting ties with a player who has proved to be an expensive mistake in the transfer market, part of a three-year cycle in 2022 which will soon fall off the current cycle. That’ll be a relief for the likes of Monchi, who has had to deal with costly errors of his predecessors.
Also in the summer of 2022 were the signings of Diego Carlos and Leander Dendoncker, and neither player left a great impression on the Villa side; Carlos, after a year out with injury, did eventually have a role to play under Emery but was allowed to leave for Turkey in January, while Dendoncker has been on a series of loans away and also has a year remaining.
The PSR cycle from 2022-2025 will end at the end of June and those losses will be removed from Villa’s situation, transfer dealings which have hurt the club in the intervening period and forced them to make decisions they’d perhaps rather not have had to make. Removing Coutinho, a regrettable flagbearer of that era, from the wage-bill would ease their issues.
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