Club Brugge vs Aston Villa news: A fairytale in Bruges? Pat Nevin

I am travelling to cover Aston Villa in the beautiful Belgian city of Bruges.

The home side will be a difficult nut to crack, having already beaten Unai Emery’s men 1-0 over there this season, but there is an argument that this Villa team is now better than they were before the January transfer window‌.

January is a notoriously difficult time to wheel and deal successfully but allowing Jhon Duran to leave and being able to bring in Marco Asensio on loan alongside a rejuvenated Marcus Rashford looks like a stroke of genius.

Duran was a natural goalscorer but not a natural team player, and remember at one point it looked like Ollie Watkins might have been allowed to go to Arsenal. Watkins is a team player, Rashford has become one again in the short term and Asensio is a versatile class act.

With financial pressures – and though they will have to consider the costs of keeping Asensio and Rashford long term – this looks like the best of all possible scenarios for Villa, having pocketed a tidy £50m profit on Duran.

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