Gab Marcotti

And then they're like, wait a minute.

And he's not very good either.

Hasn't been.

But you know what?

Yeah, best did.

He's a good player who maybe hasn't played well in those appearances.

It's also hard when you have to go a whole chunk of time without playing.

Villa's saying, hang on a minute, we don't really want to spend $35 million, so he just won't play.

So I thought the right solution would be for Liverpool to bring him back from his loan because I think he can help Liverpool.

Yeah.

Obviously, they feel differently.

They're keeping him around.

So they're trying to negotiate a way to turn that obligation to buy into some sort of option to buy.

It might cost them even more money.

Bottom line here is Villa, like we've told you, and like a lot of people, for some reason, Villa and Chelsea are under settlement agreement with...

UEFA for breaching financial sustainability rules.

If they don't hit those targets, if they breach those rules again, they are automatically getting banned for a minimum of one year.

This is the reality of it.

And those rules, by the way, those benchmarks they have to hit are tougher than the normal ones, obviously, because that's part of their punishment.

So that's why Villa have to be cautious.