Is This The End Of The Road At Villa For This Duo?

Has Di Matteo given us a big hint that Micah Richards and Leandro Bacuna will not be at the club come the start of the new season?

Villa had a very busy day on Saturday with two friendlies against Telford United and Worcester City. Naturally, Di Matteo used these two matches to give some much-needed game time to our new signings, a number of our academy players and most of our senior squad.

However, noticeably, Richards and Bacuna were not given a single minute and were not even included in the two match-day squads.

Now Richards supposedly picked up a small knock during our 8-0 victory over GAK 1902 and, therefore, this minor injury might be the sole reason why he did not feature in Saturday’s friendlies. However, if he does not play in Villa’s next two matches against Bristol on Wednesday or Nantes on Saturday, then this surely indicates that he is not part of Di Matteo’s plans for the future.

Bacuna was part of the 24-man squad that went to Austria, but he faced the ignominy of being the only player not to get any game time. In my opinion, the fact that he did not play in Austria and was not selected for Saturday’s friendlies, suggests that his time as a Villa player is soon coming to an end.

If we are being perfectly honest, both of these players have had pretty poor Villa careers to date.

Richards’ signing last summer was met with a sense of genuine optimism. However, his performances throughout the season were pretty poor, to say the least, and he was met with constant criticism from the Villa faithful.

Ever since Bacuna joined Villa in 2013, he has delivered poor performance after poor performance. To add to his constantly inept performances, he angered Villa fans back in March when he declared that he was looking to leave Villa to go and play Champions League football. After these ill-timed comments, he spent the rest of the season getting booed at whenever he was playing. Villa fans, known for their humour, also occasionally chanted “Champions League, You’re having a laugh” whenever he was in possession.

Therefore, most of us Villa fans will not be too disappointed if Di Matteo has decided that it is time for these two players to move on to pastures new.