Aston Villa playing with fire as £22m attacker primed to cause dressing room stir

Aston Villa are playing a risky game with how they’re treating Donyell Maen following his January arrival from Borussia Dortmund.

Acquired for just shy of £23 million including add-ons, Malen was brought in to add much-needed depth in attack. Unai Emery’s priority in the winter window was to sign a versatile forward capable of playing as an out-and-out striker, as a number ten, on either flank; Malen ticked all the boxes.
Jhon Duran departing for Al-Nassr and Jaden Philogene heading to Ipswich Town will have reassured Malen that he’d be a regular starter at Villa but that hasn’t proved to be the case. The 26-year-old has started just one Premier League game so far and wasn’t able to play at the end of the league phase of the Champions League due to ineligibility.
Merely 234 minutes have been accumulated by Malen in claret and blue so far, with 66 of those coming in the FA Cup victory over Tottenham Hotspur. He was never going to be as much of a shoe-in to the XI as the likes of Morgan Rogers and Ollie Watkins but Malen will be disappointed not to have featured more.
Worse still, a vital promise was broken just weeks after his arrival as Malen was left out of Villa’s registration for the latter stages of the Champions League. The Villans made a fundamental error of judgement as they over-signed in January and couldn’t register everybody.

UEFA rules state only three new additions from the winter transfer window can be included in the squad for the last 16 phase and onwards. As Villa signed five new players, two had to be brutally left out.
Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio joining on deadline day really scuppered Malen’s chances. Villa were always interested in Asensio but the move for Rashford came about very late as the Manchester United winger’s talks with the likes of Barcelona and AC Milan drew blanks.
Even though both Rashford and Asensio have joined on a temporary basis – at least to begin with – they were never realistically going to be behind in the pecking order, sealing Malen’s fate. The other player to miss out on registration – also a permanent winter addition – was Andres Garcia, but he was a more obvious choice.
One of the key factors that persuaded Malen to choose Villa was being able to play consistently in the Champions League, so to not even be included in the squad is a kick in the teeth. Game time at Dortmund wasn’t ideal either but it was still a major risk to leave for Villa — and it required some convincing.

BirminghamWorld understands Emery had a very tough conversation with Malen before confirming his decision and it did not go down at all well with the attacker. He’s remained professional enough in the aftermath but the disappointment was severe; not a good start to relations between the player and manager.