Aston Villa will be forced to retain the services of Ross McCormack, according to the Mirror.
The newspaper claims that the striker is expected to stay at Villa Park as other clubs are unwilling to meet his wage demands or transfer valuation.
McCormack moved to Aston Villa last summer for £12million from Fulham on a salary worth £50,000-a-week.
It is understood that Villa will make wholesale changes to their squad over the summer in order to free up funds but is has been emphatically decided that McCormack will not take part in the exodus and could return to pre-season training ahead of the 2017/18 Championship season.
Villa’s chief executive Keith Wyness has confirmed that there has been crunch talks held between McCormack and manager Steve Bruce.
“I know they have had a very good, positive meeting,” said Wyness, as quoted by the Mirror.
“All of you would have thought we were buying 15 goals when I was buying Ross McCormack. It didn’t happen.”
McCormack had a very public fall-out with Bruce after he failed to turn up to training and blamed it on faulty electric gate at his home.
The 30-year-old scored just three goals in 22 appearances in all competitions for Villa before he was sent out on loan to Nottingham Forest after being forced to the fringes of Bruce’s squad.
Things didn’t improve in the East Midlands though, as McCormack played just seven times, scoring one goal which came in his debut during a 5-1 loss to Norwich.
The arrival of Mark Warburton at the City Ground saw the 13-times Scotland international play just 27 minutes of football in the last nine games of the season.