Aston Villa made OGC Nice manager and former Premier League powerhouse Patrick Vieira aware that he was among the candidates to fill the vacant managerial role at the Championship club, according to journalist Alan Nixon.
The Sun reporter claims on his personal Twitter account that the 41-year-old, who has been in charge of the top flight French side since the summer, knew of Villa’s interest in his services but that things have died down somewhat, although Nixon refused to rule him out of the running.
The Frenchman, who is well known in England for his time at Arsenal and Manchester City, as well as helping France to win the World Cup, was a youth coach at City before taking on his first manager’s role at New York City FC.
Opinion
It seems as though Villa are keen on appointing a big name to fill the boots of Steve Bruce, but so far many of those mentioned would be a real gamble. To be fair to Vieira, he has plenty more experience in management than the likes of John Terry or Thierry Henry, but at the same time he is hardly proven in Europe’s top divisions with just nine games under his belt during his spell at Nice. The other issue is that Villa would have to pay compensation to the French side to prise him away, whereas other options which have been mentioned are out of work and therefore would not need to break their contracts. It seems as though all has gone quiet on the Vieira front – perhaps he was some way down the pecking order, or perhaps he turned them down. Either way, the Villans appear to be no closer to finding the individual to fill the void, and the longer the wait goes on, the more fans will grow frustrated.