Signed for £12m, left for £0: AVFC "failure" was even worse than Wesley at Villa Park - opinion

Aston Villa have seen many players join the club since the arrival of current owners Wes Edens and Nassef Sawiris.

However, the Villans were not shy when it came to dipping into the transfer market before the duo took control of the Midlands club back in 2018.

Although, as tends to happen with a lot of clubs, not all transfers end up being successful. One prime example of this at Villa is with their 2016 move for striker Ross McCormack.

Signed from Fulham in the 2016 summer transfer window in a deal worth a reported fee of £12m, the Scotsman ended up having multiple loan spells away from Villa Park at Nottingham Forest, Melbourne City, Central Coast Mariners and Motherwell before being released as a free agent in the 2019 summer transfer window.

The attacker only managed to score three goals in just 24 appearances across all competitions, meaning that he ended up costing Villa an alarming £4m-per-goal, which isn’t exactly the sort of return they’d have been hoping for given the money they paid out for him.

Even current Villa outcast Wesley managed to score more goals (5) than the Scotland international during his debut season with the Villa Park outfit.

With 20 Championship appearances under his belt in the 2016/17 season, the striker could only rack up nine shots on target and ended up getting more yellow cards (4) than goals, making him a liability across the pitch.

His performances that season ultimately earned the former Fulham attacker an uninspiring overall rating of 6.59, making him one of the lowest-rated outfield players to start more than one league game in that campaign according to WhoScored.

In addition to being a waste of space during matches, McCormack’s conduct away from the pitch was also cause for