House Prices Continue to Fall, But the Price of this Spanish Villa Will Keep on Rising

Going into Euro 2008, Valencia’s Spanish striker David Villa was the subject of transfer speculation linking him to big clubs across Europe, with most papers agreeing that the English Premier League was the most likely destination. Indeed, Valencia themselves would rather sanction a transfer to an EPL club, rather than one of their Spanish rivals.

On the 4th of June, the Telegraph reported that the explosive striker was available at a knock down price of €21.5mil (£17mil), Los Che had originally valued their star man at €35.5mil (£28mil). The fall in valuation was due to a number of factors from the catastrophe that was Season 07/08. Dutchman Ronald Koeman reveived a large golden handshake (rumoured to be €8mil/£6.3mil) to vacate his position as Manager, the loss of revenue amassed from the Champions League due to their early exit from the group stages, and money put into construction of the Nou Mastella (estimated at between €250-300mil), due to be ready for the 09/10 season.

But Valencia’s bargaining position has been strongly helped by the Spaniards form at the ongoing European Championships. In Spain’s opening game against Guus Hiddink’s Russia, El Guaje bagged a hat-trick, and followed that up with a 92nd minute winner against a more impressive Swedish team.

So from a lead off position of ‘take what we can get’, it is highly likely that the Copa Del Rey winners may get more than their valuation of €35.5mil due to the amount of clubs linked with him in recent days and weeks. So where will he end up? Compatriot and club mate Carlos Marchena believes the forward could be persuaded to join former manager Rafa Benitez at Liverpool, and Villa did nothing to say say this wasn’t a possibility, “Liverpool and Chelsea are both big clubs with a lot of attraction,” said Villa. “Liverpool have a Spanish coach and I also have a lot of friends there. “When Rafa was coach at Valencia and I was at Zaragoza there was contact about me joining Valencia but I couldn’t arrive until the year after he left there.” However, with Benitez keen to sign Gareth Barry from Aston Villa, for a fee which looks like it could be anything between €19m and €25, it is unlikely the Merseyside club could raise enough to finance a deal. Many fans also believe Liverpool striker Fernando Torres and David Villa are too similar to play together. The Spaniards rout of Russia seemed to put this argument to an end, but it reared it’s head again after Spains game against Sweden.

Arsenal and Tottenham have also been linked. It is reported that Spurs see him as a replacement for Man United bound Dimitar Berbatov. He has also issued a come and get me plea to Arsene Wenger, “I watch the Premier League a lot and the team I’m most attracted to is definitely Arsenal. Their brilliant one and two-touch football and the whole style of rapid counter-attack which dominates the top level of the Premier League now is the one that suits my game best of all.” But Wenger has cooled speculation linking Arsenal with a move for Villa, “We are not in the transfer market for David Villa, he has said some very complimentary things about us which we take as a big honour. I rate him highly as a player but I will not make concrete investigations for anyone at the moment, I feel up front I need to give time to Walcott and Bendtner because they have made big improvement for me this season. Theo is coming on so I need to give them a chance or they will not come out.”

Of course Chelsea, with their seemingly unlimitied amounts of money have also been heavily linked with a move for the Valencia player in the British media. Speaking to Guillem Balague, Villa said, “money means nothing. Of course, everybody works to earn money, but if you are not happy, material things mean nothing. My only target in life is to get better at my job” . Whether David Villa is tempted by money or not remains to be seen.

What is clear though, is that due to current form, and enough clubs involved to start a huge bidding war, the prolific striker, who has scored 18 goals in 33 appearences for Spain, and 141 goals in 289 clubs games at Sporting de Gijón, Real Zaragoza and Valencia C.F, will go for a lot more than the €21.5mil reported just over a week ago.