Aston Villa appear to have won the race for the signature of Nicky Shorey and have also sprung a surprise by agreeing a fee for Boro’s Luke Young.
Both players are reportedly at Villa Park for medicals today with a fee of £3.5 million agreed for Shorey and £2.5 million on the table for Young.
There’s been a lot of speculation surrounding Shorey since Coppell remarked last week that he expected the England man to return to the Premiership within a week. It appears that the Reading boss was spot on, although Portsmouth looked the most likely destination for Shorey until today.
With Wilfred Bouma injured for 4-5 months, Shorey is assured of a start in the Villa lineup and is certain to be a fantasy favourite. He is proven provider of assists, notching 10 for Reading in a relegation season last time out.
Given his record then, we can expect Shorey to come in around the same price as Laursen across the fantasy games. That would see him priced at 6.0 in the Fantasy Premier League game – an identical fee to Gareth Bale at Spurs who will be a comparative purchase. Anything less than that would certainly be a bargain.
The signing of Luke Young is certainly more surprising but doesn’t appear to offer as much value to fantasy mangers. Having said that, Young is currently slightly cheaper than the Villa defence across most of the games and is assured of a start with no recognised right back at the club. Just 1 goal and 1 assist in 35 starts for Boro last season tells you that he doesn’t offer any where near the attacking potential of Shorey however.
Young’s departure from Boro is likely to hand young Tony McMahon the opportunity to make the right back shirt his own at the Riverside. He’s highly rated at the club and Southgate is once again demonstrating here that if he feels he has a young and able replacement, he is prepared to let senior players like Young and Woodgate go.
One more factor to consider here of course is the fact that Villa have considerably strengthened their defence with these signings – this will obviously improve the clean sheet potential of Friedal, Laursen, Davies and Knight.