Dan Bardell gives his verdict on Aston Villa’s pursuit of Taylor Harwood-Bellis, why replacing Ezri Konsa with the Southampton defender would leave him underwhelmed and the wider concerns around Villa’s recruitment as Unai Emery prepares for another season of Champions League football.
Aston Villa have identified Taylor Harwood-Bellis as one of the players they believe could replace Ezri Konsa, but with Southampton already rejecting an opening offer, I cannot help but wonder whether Villa need to be aiming a little higher when replacing one of the best centre-backs in the Premier League.
Konsa’s move to Arsenal is not quite over the line yet, but Villa are clearly preparing for life without a player who has spent seven seasons at the club, grown alongside it and developed from the young defender signed from Brentford into an England international capable of playing for a side challenging for the biggest honours. Harwood-Bellis is on what I understand to be a very small list of potential replacements, with Villa’s opening offer reportedly around the same level as the bid Southampton rejected from Benfica earlier in the window.
There are things I like about Harwood-Bellis, and I certainly do not want this to become an article writing off a 24-year-old before he has even pulled on a Villa shirt, because we have all watched enough football to know how quickly players can develop in the right environment, particularly when that environment contains a manager as good as Unai Emery.
He is young enough to improve, he is association-trained, has captained England at youth level, already has a senior England cap and goal to his name and has experienced Premier League football with Southampton, albeit in a team that struggled badly. There is also a versatility to him, with the possibility of covering on the right when required, and all of those things explain why Villa might have looked at him and decided there is something there for Emery to work with.
My issue is not really Taylor Harwood-Bellis, it is the job we are potentially asking him to do.
If Villa were signing Harwood-Bellis to join Konsa, I would have absolutely no problem with it. If he arrives as one of two centre-backs, with another more established defender coming through the door alongside him, again, I could understand the thinking, but everything we know about squad registration and the number of centre-backs Villa can realistically carry makes it difficult to see that happening.
That leaves us looking at Harwood-Bellis as the potential direct replacement for Konsa, and I find that underwhelming.
Konsa is an elite centre-half who has become absolutely fundamental to the way Villa play. He has the recovery pace, one-v-one ability, composure and versatility to defend in the aggressive system Emery wants, he understands every detail of that system after working with the manager throughout this entire journey and, after representing England at the World Cup this summer, he is leaving Villa at the absolute peak of his powers.
Of course, people will point towards where Konsa came from himself. Villa signed him from Brentford when they were in the Championship, just as Morgan Rogers arrived from Middlesbrough and developed into a top-level player, but the circumstances are completely different. When Villa bought Konsa they had just been promoted to the Premier League, were rebuilding almost everything and were shopping in a market appropriate for where the club was at that particular moment.
Villa are now a Champions League club who finished fourth in the Premier League last season, have lifted a European trophy and are trying to establish themselves among the best teams in the country. Replacing one of your most important players with someone coming off a season in the Championship therefore carries a completely different level of risk.
The obvious caveat to all of this is the financial situation Villa continue to operate within, because I have been told that this may simply be the market the club are being forced to shop in. If spending somewhere around £20million on Harwood-Bellis allows Villa to put considerably more money into the attacking positions behind Ollie Watkins, where reinforcements are desperately needed, perhaps there is a bigger picture that will become clearer before the window closes.
That does not make the situation any less frustrating.
Villa have sold an enormous amount of talent, removed significant wages from the books and yet could find themselves replacing Konsa with a player from the Championship because PSR, SCR and the various financial restrictions continue to dictate what the club can actually do. I have argued all summer that Villa need more association-trained players, and Harwood-Bellis clearly helps there, particularly with Konsa departing and Emi Martinez potentially following him, but squad-building cannot simply become an exercise in ticking registration boxes.
There also has to be a question about the profile of Villa’s recruitment more generally, because an awful lot of the players being targeted have either played in England previously or are already based here. That may be deliberate and it may again be driven by the circumstances Villa find themselves in, but after losing so much established quality this summer, I would like to see some of that quality replaced with players who are already operating somewhere close to the required level rather than asking Emery to continually develop players into it.
There is nothing wrong with signing younger players with room to grow, and refreshing the age profile of the squad is something Villa needed to do, but when you lose the volume of genuinely top-class footballers Villa have lost, you cannot replace every one of them with potential. At some stage you need proven quality coming back through the door as well.
Jarell Quansah was the player staring me in the face when we first started discussing potential Konsa replacements. He is younger, athletic, comfortable in possession and already has experience at the very highest level, although the obvious problem is what Bayer Leverkusen would demand to even contemplate selling him. If that price puts him completely outside Villa’s reach, then you move down the list, but I would love to know who the other names on that list are before accepting that Harwood-Bellis is the best replacement available.
None of this means Harwood-Bellis could not arrive and become an excellent Aston Villa player. We have seen Emery improve enough footballers to know better than to put a ceiling on anyone before the manager has even worked with them, and ultimately if he arrives he will get every bit of backing any new Villa player deserves.
It is also why Emery remains the one thing stopping me becoming genuinely worried about where Villa currently stand. He has dealt with virtually every problem thrown at him since arriving, repeatedly adapted to circumstances outside of his control and somehow continued moving the football club forward. He remains the glue holding this together and the biggest reason to believe Villa can come through another summer of enormous change.
But backing Emery does not mean you cannot question what is happening around him, and replacing Ezri Konsa is one of the biggest decisions Villa will make this summer.
If Taylor Harwood-Bellis is the man they have chosen, I hope I am sitting here in six months wondering what on earth I was worried about, but looking at where Aston Villa are supposed to be, the player they are losing and the level required to replace him, I cannot pretend that right now it looks like enough.
