The summer of Ashley Young and will he be an Aston Villa player next season

Last year we had the summer of Baz the twat. This summer I´m fairly confident it is going to turn into the summer of the mighty Young.

Why do I call Baz a twat? Well, he told us there was no going back through the News of the World and after doing that, he was always going to be known as Baz the Twat. Ashley hasn´t done it yet and I don´t think he will.

I don´t think he will do it because he doesn´t need to and he knows what will happen if he does. Our Ashley is also, despite his age, a sensible lad that knows his value, he doesn´t need to force anything as he has years ahead of him, whereas fat Baz the twat had games.

The reason I bring this up today is because Barcelona are apparently going to switch their interest to Young and are preparing a £25mn. bid for him. Now, there is a chance this could be true and there is a chance the comments in two different papers yesterday were a polite way of nudging O´Neill to make the signings necessary.

There is also a chance it is just paper talk, but there is also a chance our Ashley will come out and tell us he isn´t leaving this summer and if he did, he´d get a lot of respect for it and it would be doing all of us a huge favour.

Why should he though? Well, we pay his wages for starters and secondly because he doesn´t need to leave and he might not be thinking of leaving, it would just be nice if there was some honesty back in the game.

We all know we need quality but if the talk from last night is true and Young does stay O´Neill would have built a fairly young and talented side and with the addition of just two or three real quality players, we could be heading in the right direction.

If it doesn´t happen or Young knows it isn´t going to happen, then you can´t really blame him for leaving, especially to the likes of Barcelona, but if he is going to stay for the season, it would just be nice that we didn´t have to go through another summer of meaningless speculation.

Even if it was Martin O´Neill coming out to tell us he isn´t leaving, would be good enough for us as we know when he says something he is telling the truth. It is all the blarney ´on the lookout' that is so frustrating with O´Neill.

Comments

No doubt there will be more speculation or opinion later but before I go, I want to talk about the comment facility. It isn´t a forum and yesterday it got a bit out of hand.

The comment facility is to comment on what you have read, for example, you would comment today on the rumour that Barcelona are interested in Ashley Young, not my views on Martin O´Neill or Randy Lerner or anything that isn´t directly related to or created from this post.

If you want a discussion, we have a forum and comments that are not directly linked to the content or something truly Aston Villa that has developed from it, will be deleted, even if you are clever and include Ashley Young.

You know who you are, we know who you are and if you continue, it is just going to result in your IP and username getting blocked from leaving comments. It doesn´t mean a bit of banter is not allowed or one liners are not welcome, just that some are using it for a discussion forum and well, it isn´t.