Aston Villa have recalled Andre Green from his loan spell at Portsmouth.
Aston Villa boss Dean Smith has told the club’s official website that he wants to improve Andre Green and ‘drive up his market value’ after his return to Villa Park.
Green has been coming up through the Villa ranks, and has made 29 appearances for the first team, scoring just the one goal for the club so far.
Despite showing promise last season, Villa brought in Yannick Bolasie and Anwar El Ghazi, and sent Green out on loan to Portsmouth on a season-long loan back in August.
The 20-year-old hit five goals in 12 games for Pompey but wasn’t a consistent starter for Kenny Jackett’s promotion-chasing side down in League One.
With Bolasie sent back to Everton earlier this week, Villa have recalled Green from his loan spell, and he will now attempt to push for first-team football back at Villa Park.
Smith has now suggested that Green wasn’t quite getting as many minutes as Villa wanted at Portsmouth, which is because they’re challenging for promotion to League One.
Smith added an intriguing line, that he wants to drive Green’s ‘market value’ up for the football club and develop him to seemingly be sold down the line.
“We recalled Andre,” said Smith. “We are looking at options all around about how we develop our younger players because they have a big part to play in the future of the football club. Andre is one of them. He was playing at Portsmouth – a loan period which was going okay, he was probably not getting as many minutes as we would all have liked. But that’s because Portsmouth were doing so well in the league.”
“We called him back. He got 30 minutes of game time on Saturday. He played in a behind-closed-doors friendly for us this week, as well. He’s starting to show the potential he’s got. It’s up to us now to polish that potential now and drive his market value up for the football club and help him fulfil that potential,” he added.
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