Though it’s been a very productive market for the club in recent years, I don’t think it’s central to what Aston Villa wish to achieve long-term.
How frustrating has it been seeing the likes of Robert Snodgrass, Sam Johnstone, Lewis Grabban and others do so well and then leave upon the expiry of their loan deals. I understand that they are Premier League level players, and in Villa’s case, the loan market is the only way to inject that type of player into the team. But it doesn’t leave anything long-lasting, having a clutch of loan players forming a core of the team.
It’s something which I hope the club realises and steps away from in the summer and future transfer windows.
Lets just take a look at how the summer will break up the squad Villa have as a result of Villa’s loan use: Axel Tuanzebe, Tyrone Mings, Tammy Abraham, Kortney Hause, Tom Carroll and Anwar El Ghazi will all leave assuming they don’t sign permanently. Currently, these are all key players in the squad, including the top scorer and the 2 current starting centre-backs. This is a major disruption that any team would suffer from, not to mention one that may not be permitted to spend any sort of meaningful money due to FFP restrictions.
Dean Smith will have a tough job trying to replace all these players if none end up signing. Coupled with the amount of players whose contracts end in the summer (Hutton, Steer, Elphick, Jedinak, Whelan, others), Villa will lose approximately half their team should none of the loanees return.
I believe the best chance of building something sustainable and long-term rests with signing players permanently, and using your own youth system – not developing other team’s players for them. As I mentioned previously it has its merits, but it’s just not justifiable or sensible to rely on the loan market so much for a team’s top performers.