Should Villa fans be worried about the current squad?

It’s now just two weeks until Aston Villa open their Championship game and the team that is currently set to play at Sheffield Wednesday closely resembles the same team that accrued 17 points last season. It’s been great to see our new owner on Twitter engaging with fans, an unbeaten pre-season to date and social media activity showing togetherness in the squad, but I do feel a slight unrest amongst fans. I am bordering on being one of them. Villa have only signed three players during the transfer window and its August next week.

The core of the squad is the one that took Villa down for the first time in 27 years. This is the squad fell out with the fans, were laughed off most Premier League grounds and then laughed at by pundits in the evening.

So far we have only seen Juan Angel Crespo and Carles Gil leave, with Brad Guzan set to join them by the end of the week. Celtic’s pursuit of Scott Sinclair continues and Micah Richards not featuring much in pre-season indicates he will soon seal a transfer away (potentially to Sunderland) but the fans were still expecting much larger upheaval of the squad. Most fans wanted to see the back of Leandro Bacuna, Joleon Lescott and Gabby Agbonlahor as quickly as possible, but they are still at the club because moving them on is proving to be difficult, or Roberto Di Matteo has given everyone a clean slate. Both of these theories would be worrying.

Villa still need a 20/25 goal a season striker, and with Jordan Ayew going to African Cup of Nations, Villa can’t just rely upon him. And there is a question mark whether Rudy Gestede would fit into Di Matteo’s system, as Villa don’t have many wingers and the manager favours playing with the ball on the ground.

There are also many other question marks over the rest of the squad, such as do Villa really want to start with Alan Hutton at right back again? He has been a symbol of Villa’s failure over the last few seasons.

Is Adama going to play in pre-season or will he be injured again? Villa fans are excited about him, but does he want to play for the club? Are Ashley Westwood and Carlos Sanchez going to be one of the pairings in central midfield again this season?

Is Libor Kozak really going to be good enough to play regularly in the Championship? The squad feels very stale and I had expected closer to 10 players to have already been moved on.

Familiarity breeds contempt and I really hope Di Matteo and Dr Tony Xia are set to make ¾ key signings over the next few weeks.