Aston Villa were involved in one of the biggest transfer deals English football has ever seen last year when they sold Jack Grealish to Manchester City for a fee of £100m.
As a product of Villa’s youth system, Grealish went on to make 256 appearances for the club across their senior and youth sides, scoring 38 goals and providing 52 assists along the way.
Clearly an important figure for Villa, the England international has now gone on to become a Premier League champion with Pep Guardiola’s side.
Moving back to the present, we feel that Steven Gerrard has the chance to unearth what could be his own version of Grealish, in terms of unleashing and embedding another one of the club’s youth talents in the first team – Cameron Archer.
Having made 53 appearances for Villa’s U18 and U21 sides combined, during which he managed to find the back of the net 19 times and deliver eight assists, the striker has also shown what he’s capable of when given the chance to play in the senior side.
With nine first-team appearances under his belt, the 20-year-old has netted four goals in total.
During his loan spell in the Championship with Preston North End last season, Archer started to make a name for himself on the senior stage by scoring seven times in 20 appearances.
This backs up why he was previously labelled as a “goal machine” by Villa journalist Ashley Preece on Twitter.
This season has seen the youngster play just 10 minutes of Premier League action across two of their six matches.
Bearing in mind how only AFC Bournemouth (34) have had fewer shots at goal in the league so far this season than Villa (56), perhaps this should persuade Gerrard to give Archer his first start this season, to see if his clear attacking talent can help the team become a deadlier side in front of goal.
