Aston Villa star could leave in the summer transfer window to play under his former England teammate and start fresh.
Aston Villa might be losing another star next season. Besides Morgan Rogers and Emiliano Martinez, who are in high demand, the senior player who has been a utility man in the second half of the season following the crisis in the midfield, Ross Barkley, could head to the exit in the summer.
His main potential suitor is none other than the newly promoted side, Coventry City.
The Sky Blues, according to the report in Birmingham Mail, are planning a transfer strategy ahead of the window opening, with the club’s manager himself targeting Barkley, whose future in Villa Park is still doubtful.
His contract runs till this summer, but there is an option for an extension. However, the former Everton and Luton man is believed to prefer more regular minutes with the first team. Thus, he could be offloaded for fresh younger players for their UCL campaign next season.
The current Coventry City manager is none other than the former Barkley’s teammate in the Three Lions squad, Frank Lampard. The former Chelsea and Everton boss is interested in the service of the 32-year-old midfielder to lead his young inexperienced team in their Premier League campaign. His long experience at the top level would be handy to guide the team’s mentality to survive in the top flight.
Little do people know that Ross Barkley was once playing together with Frank Lampard. It was in the 2014 FIFA World Cup, plus several other games previously in the qualifiers. Under Roy Hodgson’s tutelage, Barkley, 20 years old at that time, was still a promising young talent, while Lampard, 35 at that time, was already at the twilight of his career.
He was one of the exciting English talents included in the final squad alongside Arsenal’s Jack Wilshere, Liverpool’s Raheem Sterling, Southampton’s Adam Lallana and Luke Shaw. Barkley featured in all three games, but only as a starter in the final group game versus Costa Rica alongside Lampard.
In the previous two, the current Villa man only came off the bench. The Chelsea star, on the contrary, did not get a nod at all in the first two games while England was beaten by Italy and Uruguay. It was Lampard’s last major tournament but Barkley’s first. He earned another call-up for EURO 2016, which was ironically his last international tournament.
The Liverpool-born midfielder took a special leave earlier this season, which made him absent for eight games. He eventually still managed to feature in 20 games up to now and bag two goals in the process in all competitions.
Barkley was excluded from the Europa League squad for the latter stages due to his knee injury in early December. It kept him on the sideline until late January.
However, following the injuries of Boubacar Kamara and then Amadou Onana, he has been the emergency solution in the defensive midfielder crisis lately. Yet, due to his omission in the Europa League, the versatile midfielder, who had a brief spell in France with OGC Nice, could only fill the void in the Premier League.
One aspect which might lack in his form is consistency. He performed well, for example, while Villa lost to Manchester United 3-1 on the road last March but was largely disappointing in the last outing versus Spurs.
Switching sides is probably the best solution for the midfielder who has high successful passes (87.3%), average accurate long balls (68.8%) and successful dribbles (66.7%) plus a rather low rate of winning aerial duels (54.2%), according to FotMob. His defensive contribution is fairly low too, with only three times blocking shots, 10 tackles and two interceptions this season.
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