Swapsies: Inside the Aston Villa and Juventus mega deal

Transfer silly season is underway, and it’s getting stranger and stranger every year. That strangeness has been headlined by Aston Villa, who are on the cusp of completing a rare player swap deal you almost never see.

Their partner in this weird trade is, obviously, Juventus. They have form for this sort of stuff — remember that Pjanić-Arthur deal that turned out very badly for everyone involved — but, interestingly, it’s not them with their metaphorical financial back against the wall this time. It’s Aston Villa.

Amongst all of this, two interesting young talents developed in the burgeoning Juventus Next Gen academy (see more below) are making the move to the Premier League, with established starter Douglas Luiz going the opposite way.

How Juventus are building the world's best talent pipeline

Juventus have never been associated with academy development. Yes, players have popped up here and there: Claudio Marchisio, Ciro Immobile, Moise Kean and Sebastian Giovinco come to mind. But the club’s academy has never been relied upon to constantly churn out first team products. Promotions have been ad hoc. Giovinco and Immobile barely even broached the first team.

SCOUTED NotebookStephen Ganavas

To put some sense into this deal, I snuck into the DMs of one Sam Tighe, long-time SCOUTED favourite, to flesh this all out and take stock of what it means for Villa, as they try to straddle the fine line between Premier League financial regulations and building a team ready to compete in the upcoming edition of the UEFA Champions League.

This piece is half Q&A, half analysis — what does this deal mean for the two clubs, and where do these players fit in? I’ve tagged my own analysis onto Sam’s insightful answers.