The super sly Aston Villa transfer swap deal that could fix pre-season problems

Aston Villa are just a few days away from starting a brand new season as a bona fide Champions League team, so all of their problems are first world problems right now – but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist, and they do have an issue in attack which needs to be addressed if they want to maintain forward momentum and give themselves a genuine chance of getting back into the top four in a year’s time.

The problem, as mild as it may be compared to the issues Villa were dealing with before and after their relegation to the Championship eight years ago, centres on two players – Moussa Diaby, who has left, and Jhon Durán, who hasn’t. Sorting it all out may be difference between success and failure over the coming months.

Diaby’s departure for warmer and wealthier climes leaves Villa with a hole in the front line. The Frenchman may have failed to maintain the impressive form with which he started the 2023/24 season, but during those early months his direct running from deep areas, goal threat and apparently instinctive understanding with Ollie Watkins gave Unai Emery’s forward line an extra dimension that several teams struggled to cope with.

Durán, meanwhile, is a malcontent who wants to make his name as a starter rather than as a back-up whose usage is, at best, intermittent – fair enough, all told, but a buyer has proven tricky to come by. Chelsea were in and then out. West Ham United were suggested as a possibility but seem to have plumped for Niclas Füllkrug instead. As it stands, Villa have a player who doesn’t really want to be there stuck on their books.

In an ideal world, one assumes, Emery would offload the Colombian and sign a player who has the kind of finishing instincts and ability to play off the shoulder of the last man that would make them a good option should Watkins need a rest and who could also play the Diaby role, running at defenders with pace from behind Watkins and threatening to score themselves.

It sounds like an optimistic shopping list, admittedly, but they have also been linked repeatedly with a move for Hoffenheim’s 21-year-old German international Maximilian Beier in recent weeks – and he could well fit the bill precisely.

After two respectable but hardly remarkable seasons on loan with Hannover 96 in the second tier of German football, Beier exploded onto the Bundesliga scene over the past season, scoring 16 goals in 33 league games and earning a place in Germany’s Euro 2024 squad. He seems to have all the attributes required to plug the hole left by Diaby and provide some stiff competition for Watkins.

Beier is notionally a central striker but spends much of his time dropping deep and into the channels on the hunt for the football – and his impressive, direct dribbling and capacity to surge at defenders is undeniably redolent of Diaby at his very best, while his excellent finishing (his 16 goals came at an xG of 11.4) suggests that he has the talent to replace Watkins when called upon. Given his age, he may even eventually outshine him.

He's also capable of playing as an inside forward on the left wing, and while Villa are fairly well-stocked down that flank thanks to the additions of Morgan Rogers and Samuel Iling-Junior, a little bit of positional versatility never hurt anyone. Still, the main reason they’re apparently after the player is because he ticks just about every box they need to get ticked before the season kicks off. As his current manager Pellegrino Matarazzo told the media, “he has those genes to score goals.”

So what’s the hold up? Well, according to Sky Sports Germany reported Florian Plettenberg, Borussia Dortmund have taken the lead in a race which also includes Chelsea and Juventus, with his club looking for a fee of up to €30m (£25.8m) for his services. In the current climate, that seems like a snip for a deeply dangerous forward.

Could Villa get a step up ahead of their rivals by including Durán as a sweetener? Heaven knows if he would be willing to head to Germany to get the regular minutes he craves, but if he wants out and nobody in England will have him then dropping him off in a loan deal or a similar arrangement would make a lot of sense for the player, giving him the chance to finally prove that he’s worth the kind of money that Chelsea and West Ham at least considered paying for him, however briefly.

But even if that neat, two-birds-one-stone solution proves untenable (which is rather likely), Villa should surely push to be the team that signs Beier. Dortmund may have reached the Champions League final but it’s Villa who will play there next season, and that gives them an advantage when it comes to attracting new players. Beier looks a lot like he’s exactly the forward that they need to round their attack out and compete in Europe and the Premier League next year. Without him, they could find themselves leaning very hard indeed on Watkins’ form and fitness over the course of the coming campaign.

And as for Durán? It’s seldom worth fighting to keep a player who doesn’t want to be at a club, and even less when they really haven’t proven themselves yet. The Colombian may well shine somewhere down the line, but he hasn’t yet - and Villa should probably not be looking to play games with his price tag if they get a chance to make a sensible amount of money elsewhere or can find someone to take him on loan for a year. That would, at least, give him a chance to show that he’s worthy of a starting berth at the top level. Right now, it would be a surprise if any club bigger than Hoffenheim was willing to take a chance like that on him.