Aston Villa fans pile in as £8.5m transfer bid rejected

Prior to the arrival of Lucas Digne at Aston Villa, many fans wanted Aaron Hickey to come in and compete with Matt Targett for a starting role.

Digne has since signed from Everton, which has left Targett's first team prospects looking fairly bleak in claret and blue.

Targett now looks set to depart for Newcastle United and with Steven Gerrard keen to have multiple players across each position, the links to Hickey have once again intensified.

Bologna-based newspaper Il Resto del Carlino reports that Bologna have rejected a bid worth around £8.5m for long-term target Hickey.

Villa fans have had their say on the deal:

Makes sense that we would be after him if Targett is off. If it does all pan out, it will be fantastic. We have a world class left back with an incredibly promising understudy, who would be replacing what I feel is a pretty poor full back in Targett. So would be better all round in the present & for the future…Fingers crossed.

Why can we never seem to just sell a player these days instead of loaning them out first?! I wouldn't be confident enough about him making a good enough impression there for them to want to sign him to be honest.

I've seen enough of targett to confidently say he is just not good enough - I wouldn't even be happy to have him as a backup, he's very lightweight & has far more poor to mediocre games than good ones.

Looks like we are after a back up left back.

Why sell or loan our players, big clubs have two for each position.

The reason it's a low bid is because Bologna don't have much money. They've only ever signed two players for a value that exceeded £8.5 million. Meaning it isn't much to us but it could be a lot to them.

Sell Targett bring him in

Hopefully we're only