There is a reason why Aston Villa were so desperate to hijack Johan Manzambi’s proposed move from Freiburg to Newcastle this summer, which appeared nailed on. The tall, quick, tricky, clever and perfectly balanced 21-year-old Switzerland attacking midfielder looked worth every penny of the record £50m plus fee Villa ended up paying for him and duly delighted in showing Tynesiders what they missed.
For Newcastle and their disconsolate manager, Matthias Jaissle, there was a cruel irony that Manzambi ended up heading the winner on a day when the Premier League’s CEO, Richard Masters, was in the directors’ box to watch arguably the two teams most affected by the spending rules imposed during his tenure. Those regulations have turned Unai Emery into a master of reinvention at Aston Villa but, in the league at least, the Spaniard’s latest rebuild has been slow to quite click cleanly into place. On this evidence that just might be changing.
