Has ‘whinging’ John McGinn really got any better options than Aston Villa?

Aston Villa and John McGinn seem to be drifting apart, but what are the options for him to go to a bigger club without becoming a benchwarmer?

‘Whinging’ is a very emotive word, so it was curious to see it being used in connection with ongoing speculation over the future career plans of the Aston Villa midfielder John McGinn. McGinn has been at Villa Park for four years and has racked up almost 150 appearances for the club; with almost 50 Scotland caps under his belt, perhaps he believes that he should be moving on to bigger and better things. The problem with this belief is that it’s a little difficult to see where he might fit in anywhere else.

But what is McGinn worth, how likely is it that Villa would want to offload him, and where might he go, if he’s seeking a big move? Gabriel Agbonlahor, whose post-playing career seems to now largely consist of commenting on whatever transfer rumour flickers across his news feed (or occasionally through his imagination), put a price tag of £70m on McGinn and claimed that “Steven Gerrard will not entertain the possibility of letting him go”.

Neither part of that comment looks particularly insightful now. Even in an age when transfer fees have broadly stopped making much logical sense, the idea of anybody paying £70m for this particular player seems fanciful. Meanwhile, the rumour mill has already come full circle and is now suggesting that Aston Villa are ‘willing to listen to offers’ for McGinn. We can assume that such offers would start a little lower than £70m.

Had McGinn stayed on his original contract, it’s likely that his options would be much wider now. He signed a four-year contract with Aston Villa when he moved to the club for £2m from Hibernian in 2018, and that contract would be coming to an end now had he not extended his deal in December 2020 for a further five years. That deal saw him commit to staying at Villa Park until 2025, by which time McGinn will be 31 years old.

For a professional footballer, signing a lengthier contract with a club comes with costs and benefits. On the one hand, in an extremely precarious position – we largely only ever hear about the success stories, but all players have friends and acquaintances from their younger days who didn’t make the grade or fell from favour – a lengthy contract on a good salary offers a degree of financial security.

But a longer contract can become an albatross round the neck, pushing up any potential transfer fee…