Aston Villa journalist Dan Bardell has been discussing the possibility of Villa signing Southampton striker Danny Ings this summer.
This comes after the journalist recently made an appearance on The Villa View, a Villa-themed podcast where he talked through a variety of subjects surrounding the Birmingham club.
On the topic of Villa trying to sign a goalscorer this summer, Bardell suggested Ings as one player that could be a good fit for Villa’s needs. Here’s what he had to say on the matter.
He said: “I can’t think of a striker off the top of my head who you could get who you could say is a natural Premier League goalscorer.
“You’d love to sign Danny Ings for Villa, I think he’d absolutely bang them in. But Southampton would want crazy money for him. He probably wouldn’t really want to move, he would probably look at it as a sideways move. Getting a goalscorer in with Premier League pedigree is the hardest thing to do, and that’s where I feel a little bit sorry for the transfer team, because I genuinely think it’s so, so difficult.
“It’s probably something you can get in every other position, but a goalscorer, goalscorers are hard to come by anyway, natural goalscorers, but to get one who’s got that extra box ticked of the Premier League experience as well, who’s going to get your 15-20 [goals a season], I think is nigh on impossible, to be honest.”
Ings, who is valued at £18 million (as per Transfermarkt), was in hot form for Southampton last season having scored 22 goals in 38 Premier League appearances throughout the 2019/20 campaign, making him the joint-second top goalscorer alongside Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
The Englishman’s performances in those league appearances earned him a season rating of 7.12/10, making him Southampton’s second-highest rated player last year (per WhoScored).
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TIF Thoughts…
With such an impressive goalscoring record to his name last season in the Premier League, it’s no surprise that Bardell suggested that Ings would be a fantastic buy for Villa this summer.
However, with Southampton finishing the 2019/20 season six places and 17 points ahead of Villa, it would seem unlikely that Ings would want to move to a club that finished below Southampton last season.
This could be one reason why Bardell suggested that Ings would probably be reluctant to leave Southampton for Villa this summer.