Christian Purslow robustly defends Aston Villa’s summer signing spree

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The Aston Villa chief executive has responded to questions about the club’s summer transfer window.

Aston Villa chief executive Christian Purslow has hit back at criticism of the club’s transfer business since being promoted to the Premier League, Sky Sports report.

Last season’s Championship play-off winners made 12 signings prior to the beginning of the new campaign, spending in excess of £100m and delighting fans in the process.

Some though have likened their shopping spree to the one Fulham embarked on in 2018 before they finished 19th in the league and were relegated back to the English second-tier.

Purslow, without commenting on the London side’s plight, has moved to reinforce that Villa’s transfer approach was not scatter-gun this summer and in fact gives them good grounding for a competitive season.

As quoted by Sky Sports, he said: “Of the 12, four players were with us last season, loans that we converted into transfers. Three players had either played for our coach at Brentford or had been about to sign for Brentford, so that’s seven of the 12.

“This is not: find a footballer, bring him to Birmingham and hope he works well for Dean Smith. These are players intimately familiar to our coach and our coaching staff.”

Purslow’s defence of the club’s transfer strategy is hardly a surprise but there is truth in what he says too.

It’s easy to look at volume of recruitment and total transfer outlay and make sweeping judgements.

As pointed out though, Villa haven’t gone out and bought for the sake of buying. It’s more they’ve backed their manager Smith to get the players he wants into the club, that he feels can keep them up.

Time will tell whether they’ve recruited sharply but in the early pre-season goings they’ve looked a pretty cohesive unit.

Their performance against one of the top teams in Europe last term, Tottenham Hotspur, on the opening weekend was no disgrace either.

The core of the team that got them promoted is still intact, with players such as Jack Grealish and John McGinn ready to make the step up to the top-flight.

The Villans will be hoping it all starts to pay off this Saturday when they host Bournemouth.