or more likely villa offered double the wages!
Is the right answer.
The mainland is skint due to the Pandemic outside of a few clubs (Real, PSG, Bayern) hence why the RS keep reaching CL finals.
Nows a good a time as any for English clubs to be offering £100k+ a week contracts to players overseas.
The CB Villa have signed is 29 and is on over 120k a week on a long term deal and likely promised regular football - less competition for places than a team like Atletico who'll have offered lesser wages.
As I've repeatedly said Villa are Everton about 2 years behind our cycle. They spent similiar fees as us when we sold Lukaku with the
Grealish money. Like us they have this window and next summer to get it right enough to be fighting for a top 4 spot or win the Europa League and get access into the CL before they are in our position.
A load of 31-32 year olds on 100k+ contract's they cant shift and a few players in their prime like Bailey/Buendia who are decent (think Doucoure/Mina) but are either too injury prone or not good enough to make a big sale on to balance the books.
The crowing from Villa fans currently is exactly the same as some of our lot when we were winning the transfer window signing players like James Rodriguez on 150k a week and before that highly rated players like Moise Kean from overseas and Morgan Schneiderlin from here.