Anwar El Ghazi is surplus to requirements at Aston Villa and Ashley Preece of Birmingham Live says Steven Gerrard wants to offload the 27-year-old before the transfer window shuts, but the Villa boss has so far failed to find a suitor willing to pay.
El Ghazi bagged himself a loan move to another Premier League club last season when Villa didn’t have a place for him in the first-team, so why aren’t sides interested this summer? He’s currently playing in the reserves until he finds a club, but that doesn’t look a guarantee as things stand.
The Dutch international scored an impressive 10 goals from 28 Premier League games in 2020/21, but he completely fell off the following season. El Ghazi made just 9/19 league appearances in 2021/22, scoring one goal with one assist while spending most of the campaign as an unused substitute.
He went on to join Everton midway through the season but featured just twice in the league, amassing 11 minutes of football. So with El Ghazi falling out of favour at two different clubs, scoring only one goal in 12 months, it’s easy to see why top-flight clubs in England aren’t keen.
So that leaves a second-tier outfit as a potential destination if he doesn’t go abroad, but El Ghazi’s £30k-per-week wages would be a major problem. Paying £1.5m-a-year for an out-of-forward wide-man wouldn’t be good business. And then there’s his contract at Villa expiring in 2023, so clubs might prefer to wait a year to snap him up on a free transfer.
A loan move may be the best Villa can hope for.
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