The 32-year-old right-back appears to have lost his place in the starting XI to the younger, modernised James Bree.
Steve Bruce has already encouraged wholesale changes of Aston Villa’s playing staff but his alterations will not stop there. During Saturday’s 2-1 defeat to Nottingham Forest, the Villa boss trialled a new 3-5-2 formation and, although the results were disappointing, he is not ready to call time on his experiment just yet.
“We’ve only tried it for two days so we’ll work at it and it will get better – there’s things we have got to improve on,” he said in quotes reported by the Birmingham Mail.
“We will get better. It’s a system I’ve used before and one I quite enjoy.”
However, if there’s one man who could be forgiven for not exactly sharing the same level of enthusiasm, it’s orthodox, old-school right-back Alan Hutton.
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If the January arrival of teenager James Bree from Barnsley had elicited some concern about the future of the 32-year-old, who will be out of contract at the end of the season, the adoption of a new formation appears to have drilled another nail into his career coffin.
The Birmingham Mail reports that Hutton would consider extending his contract at Villa Park but, in truth, a traditional, tough-tackling bruiser with just three assists in 108 league games for the Midlands club appears ill-suited to the demands of the wing-back role – unlike, for example, the overlapping Jordan Amavi on the opposite flank.
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Unlike the tenacious, high-tempo, pinpoint crosser Bree. Therefore, if he is looking for regular first-team football in the twilight of his career, now might be the time to end his turbulent spell at Villa Park.
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