Almost none of them attract firm bids of over half a million pounds, which is what Villa tabled a year ago. And it wasn’t to be third choice, it was to be backup to Martinez. Jed Steer was going to be allowed to move on loan with Stevens as first sub keeper. In the end they brought in Robin Olsen in late January with Steer going on loan to Luton. That was planned to be Stevens’ spot.
I just find it weird that there’s been quite a lot of very, very harsh criticism of Stevens in recent months. The amount of people I’ve seen questioning whether any club would even want him on loan, or saying things like “if anybody offered us cash we should snap their hands off” has been a bit of a shock to the system at times, for me. Neither keeper had a great season last year, and it’s totally fair to say as much, but there seems to be a bit of vitriol behind comments towards Stevens at times, and I don’t really get it. Maybe people expected too much of him so are coming across as overly brutal at times, but I do find it a little jarring.
He could’ve thrown his toys out of the pram and forced through the Villa move, which would’ve tripled his wages for the next four years, but he behaved superbly and signed a new long-term contract rather than flouncing off for peanuts. While that doesn’t make him immune from criticism I do think it’s forgotten sometimes, that’s all.
EDIT: And anyway, Martinez and Steer are both homegrown keepers, so that had nothing to do with Villa’s intentions. Especially given they then loaned out Steer and replaced him with Olsen, thus reducing the number of homegrown players in their squad rather than increasing it. As for Arsenal, their second and third choice keepers aren’t homegrown - the latter of whom, Turner, was signed from the MLS literally weeks after they decided not to push ahead with Stevens - so there’s nothing tactical going on with their goalie spots either if they eventually went for an American with zero homegrown criteria. About 90% of the PL doesn’t need to play that game with the third keeper spot as they have enough players who qualify anyway. They usually go for cheap 30-somethings who are just happy to have a contract, and most of the time that’s got nothing to do with their homegrown status, they’re just covering their arses in case of a freak injury scenario.
Whether Villa and Arsenal had homegrown keepers/didn’t sign other ones doesn’t change that they need to fill their quota, and signing a young back-up English keeper on a long-term deal helps them do that. I don’t think Jack would be getting interest if he wasn’t, especially not now.
I’m not sure how the criticism can be too jarring, beyond the point of just wanting to protect a guy who has come through at Oxford and made a blistering start to his career including an iconic save against Swindon. I haven’t seen anything personal, just that he clearly wasn’t good enough last season. Everybody wants Jack to bounce back to top form and fitness after his illness, and I think the club have played this perfectly by protecting our asset whilst allowing him to have the platform to show everyone what he can do without taking on any of the risk.
Clubs may well still be monitoring him now, but nobody would bid anywhere near the 500k Villa offered and that’s a sign of the last 12 months. If we’re fielding those kind of bids again next summer than hopefully we can rebuff them, but if we’d had any in the last few months I think we all know that Jack wouldn’t have been signing a 3yr deal with us.
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