West Ham forward Andy Carroll is the most likely player to join Aston Villa next, according to Football Whispers.
The football news site claims that Carroll, 29, has a strong chance of winding up at Villa Park this summer, even though the West Midlands club’s financial issues may mean that their transfer business may be extremely limited.
According to statistics website Spotrac, Carroll earns £90,000-a-week in his deal at West Ham, but Football Whispers, which gathers transfer rumours from across the world and calculates the chances of them coming true, claims there is a 3.2 in 5 chance that he will head to Aston Villa as their next signing.
OPINION
There’s just no way that this will happen and it’s hard to see how Football Whispers have come up with this. They rate it as being a pretty good chance that Carroll will find his way to Aston Villa this summer, but given how strapped for cash the Championship club are, a deal is just completely out of the question. Even with selling the £30million-rated Jack Grealish, Villa would still have to reduce their high wagebill and given Carroll’s high wages at West Ham, there’s no chance he would want to drop down to the Championship and earn a mere fraction. If Villa cannot get Robert Snodgrass back on loan this summer, then there’s no chance of them getting anyone else. Carroll would be a good signing for any Championship club, even with his injury record. But it would be a shock to see him drop down a division when surely there would be a less-established Premier League club that would be willing to sign him up.