Veretout played 29 times for Villa last term, but joined Saint-Etienne on loan this summer.
Aston Villa midfielder Jordan Veretout has claimed to France Football that the club stopped letting him on the pitch in the final weeks of the season to avoid paying bonuses on his transfer.
Veretout notoriously turned down the opportunity to sign fro eventual champions Leicester City to instead move to Villa Park in a £7 million deal last summer.
Instead of holding aloft the Premier League trophy at the King Power Stadium, the 23-year-old was part of the Villa squad that suffered statistically the third-worst relegation in the revamped top flight’s history.
Veretout made 29 appearances for Villa in all competitions throughout last campaign, but his last first-team playing time came in a 1-0 defeat to Swansea City on 19 March.
That was just 10 days before Remi Garde, with whom Veretout says he got on very well, left the club by mutual consent and was replaced on a caretaker basis by coach Eric Black.
However, Veretout believes it was more than just a coaching change which saw his playing time come to an end. Sport Witness alleges that a clause in the midfielder’s contract obligated Villa to pay more money for the player if he made 30 appearances in his first season.
Veretout was left stranded on 29, a number which appears very coincidental if it did not have anything to do with that clause. The player himself remains suspicious.
Veretout told France Football, via Sport Witness: “They told me they didn’t do it on purpose, but when you are a sub, there’s only one midfielder on the bench – me – and a midfielder on the pitch gets injured and they bring on a forward, you can only question the decision.”
Even if that suggestion is true, it is difficult to imagine many supporters getting too upset about it.
Veretout was by no means the worst player in Villa’s annus horribilis, but incurring financial cost by playing him in the final weeks of the campaign would have made little sense, considering that he could not have made any tangible difference to the outcome of the club’s season.
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