Aston Villa playmaker Emiliano Buendia is reportedly attracting interest from Stuttgart in a fresh link of a potential exit ahead of the transfer deadline.
The 28-year-old established himself as a key figure in the side after Unai Emery’s arrival, but a serious knee injury ahead of the 2023/24 campaign saw him miss the entire season as he went through a gruelling rehabilitation.
READ MORE: Injury blow for Villa with influential figure facing spell on sidelines
Having battled back to feature at the start of the following season, Buendia spent the second half of last year on loan at Bayer Leverkusen, in a possible hint that his long-term future could lie elsewhere.
However, he impressed over pre-season this past summer and has seemingly worked his way back into Emery’s plans, but according to BirminghamLive, it’s still possible that he could leave the club with Stuttgart said to be interested in signing him.
That said, the report notes that it’s unclear at this stage whether it would be a loan or permanent deal, and so with a lack of concrete details, we’ll have to wait to see what materialises in the coming days.
Villa have already sold Jacob Ramsey and sent Leon Bailey out on an initial loan move to Roma this month, and so Emery’s attacking options are dwindling at a time when we’re struggling to show enough quality in the final third after picking up a point in our opening two Premier League games of the season, without scoring a goal.
In turn, although many will argue that Buendia is not at the level required to take his forward, it would be rather concerning if we allowed another attacking player to leave this summer, with question marks still lingering over our activity in the market in terms of bringing in reinforcements.
As noted above, there are no clear details provided in the report other than Stuttgart are said to be interested in the Argentine ace, and so time will tell if he does leave, and whether that subsequently then gives us more space and financial flexibility to bring in a preferred target ahead of the deadline.
Buendia could undoubtedly be a useful squad player this year given we will look to compete across four competitions, and just as it seemed as though he might have played his way back into contention over the summer, question marks are once again being raised over his future at Villa as our mini exodus could continue.
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