Aston Villa defender Josh Feeney has been linked with a move to Real Union, and others could also follow him to Spain.
The 18-year-old joined us from Fleetwood Town in July 2021, and although he hasn’t made a senior appearance as of yet despite making our matchday squad on occasion, he has featured regularly at U21s level.
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Naturally, there will be a stage in his development that involves going out on loan to gain valuable playing time and experience, and he could be set for a move to Spain.
According to Sport, Feeney attended a Real Union game at the weekend, the Spanish outfit that was added to V Sports’ growing network of clubs recently, while there are family ties with Unai Emery too.
The nature of the partnership would suggest that there will be new pathways opened up in both directions for young players to get an opportunity to impress, and Feeney is the first name to be paired with a switch to Spain.
Further, the report goes on to add three more players could make a similar move, albeit they are not named, and so it promises to be an intriguing situation that will hopefully help our top youngsters get the experience they need to make it to the senior level.
While we’d ideally like to see them make an eventual breakthrough in a Villa shirt under Emery, we have seen how important it is to sell some of our prized assets too over the past year, with the likes of Cameron Archer and Aaron Ramsey moving on and helping to balance our books for FFP purposes.
All of which will no doubt be considered by the club hierarchy, led by Monchi, as part of our short-term and long-turn roadmap in the transfer market, but fundamentally, it will hopefully show how important and beneficial the multi-club model strategy adopted by our owners can be to help us achieve our objectives moving forward.
That said, Real Union currently ply their trade in the third tier of Spanish football, and so it could be argued that young talents like Feeney, who need a step up in competition, should be loaned out at a higher level. On the flip side of that, given the Emery connection, it could be seen as the ideal education for him to have the best possible chance of making it at Villa.