58 appearances, £1.2m-per-goal: Sherwood flop was a disastrous signing for Aston Villa - opinion

Aston Villa were having a rather rough time in the years before current owners Wes Edens and Nassef Sawiris took over the club in 2018 in terms of their positions in the Premier League and Championship.

In terms of the transfers which took place in the years leading up to NSWE’s takeover, one player in particular with whom the Midlands club had a pretty big howler was Jordan Ayew.

Signed during the 2015 summer transfer window from French club Lorient, the Villans splashed out £12m to bring the attacker to Villa Park.

Upon the player’s arrival, then-Villa manager Tim Sherwood said that the Ghanaian “is a fantastic young player who is perfectly suited to the Premier League”.

However, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s safe to say that Ayew was not perfectly suited to playing for the Villans, for whom he only netted 10 goals in 58 appearances across all competitions. He therefore cost the club £1.2m for every goal he scored, and that’s before taking his weekly wages into account.

In January 2017, Villa cut their ties with the striker by selling him to Swansea City, where he also ended up making 58 appearances across all competitions, scoring 12 goals and providing six assists along the way.

Ayew then found himself back in England after Crystal Palace shelled out £2.5m to sign him in the summer of 2019. At Selhurst Park, he has gone on to score 13 goals and deliver 10 assists in 126 appearances.

This season has seen the former Villan make just four goal contributions in 25 league appearances, earning himself an uninspiring overall performance rating of 6.63/10. That makes him one of the lowest-rated players in Patrick Vieira’s squad to have started more than one league game in the current campaign according to WhoScored.

Ta