Forget Johnstone – Here Are 2 Worthy Alternatives Who Aston Villa Can Target Including This Man City Starlet

2 Sam Johnstone Alternatives For Aston Villa To Consider

As reported before, Aston Villa seem keen to sign Sam Johnstone permanently while Manchester United seem to want to keep him for themselves, despite no promise of first-team football in the near future.

Johnstone has been excellent this season so far as Villa look to gain promotion back to the Premier League, with his loan deal at the club ending next summer and Man United have it within their capabilities to automatically extend his contract with them until July 2018.

The feeling is that they will do that simply in order to be able to demand a higher fee for selling Johnstone, a move which does the player no real favours at all. The 24-year-old has remained non-committal regarding all of this and has simply stated that he is at Villa until the end of the season and is enjoying himself.

If Johnstone is the sort of option Villa thought was working for them then they may as well stick to the same theme. So, with that in mind, here are two young English ‘keepers for Steve Bruce to consider should they fail to land Johnstone permanently.

Daniel Bentley (Brentford)

Villa will have already gotten a good look at Bentley this season as he’s playing in the Championship for Brentford, with the 24-year-old from Basildon in Essex having kept 5 clean sheets so far.

He is definitely an up and comer and is playing at a club which has a tendency to be able to improve players beyond recognition, though in the past this has been more about strikers than ‘keepers.

His club are also well known for being open to the idea of selling their assets and so any reasonable bid from Villa would most likely be accepted and the player himself would love to play for one of the great old clubs.

Angus Gunn (Manchester City)

In a very similar position to Sam Johnstone; Gunn is at Manchester City but doesn’t have massively strong prospects of seeing first-team football at the Etihad in the very near future.

To be fair, City do think plenty of him having signed him when he was just 15 years old. He now finds himself back at hometown team of Norwich City on loan for the rest of this season. A move for him would be fairly ambitious but could end up paying off if the deal offered to the player himself is good enough.