Alex McLeish reportedly identified current Everton midfielder Gylfi Sigurdsson for Aston Villa before he joined Tottenham Hotspur.
McLeish was in charge of Villa from the summer of 2011 until the end of the 2011-12 season.
Sigurdsson was on the books of German club Hoffenheim from 2010 until 2012, although the Iceland international midfielder was on loan at Swansea City during the second half of the 2011-12 campaign from the German club.
The former Reading midfielder moved to Tottenham in the summer of 2012 for a transfer fee reported by The Daily Mail to be worth £8 million.
After a spell at Swansea from 2014 until 2017, Sigurdsson switched to Everton in the summer of 2017 for a transfer fee reported by BBC Sport to be worth £45 million.
Missed opportunity?
Sigurdsson did well during his loan spell at Swansea in 2012, which is why he earned the move to Tottenham, but the midfielder did not make a huge impact at White Hart Lane.
It would have been tough for Villa to compete with the North London outfit for the midfielder at the time anyway.
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