Let The Silly Season Begin: Aston Villa "Said" To Be "Targeting" Victor Moses

With Paul Lambert having been officially unveiled as Aston Villa manager earlier today, everyone's attention will now turn to the transfer market. I enjoy transfer rumor-mongering as much as the next guy, and it's especially exciting this year; the general consensus seems to be that Lambert is going to have some money to spend, and it would be a bit of a shock if several players weren't shipped out of Villa Park. We all know stuff -and potentially some very exciting stuff- will be coming down the pike.

You know who else knows this? Transfer rumor mongering websites. Which leads to things like this post at Setanta Sports claiming that Villa is lining up a move for Wigan Athletic winger Victor Moses. Now, to be sure, nothing about this rumor is implausible; Moses is young, promising, plays a position Villa desperately need to strengthen, and will be out of contract after this season. What's more, he's likely to come relatively cheap, both in terms of a transfer fee and his wages. In short, Moses is pretty much exactly the kind of player I'd like to see Villa target; very little downside risk (he'd be an immediate upgrade over Albrighton and Holman) and a fair amount of upside potential. Even if he doesn't improve all that much, he's still a good player to have around and if he does develop into an elite player then he's young enough at 22 that Villa would be the club that ends up cashing in when the time comes for him to move on.

But the simple fact that it would seem to make sense doesn't mean it's going to happen, or even that any of the necessary decision makers have even thought about trying to make it happen. And crucially, nothing in the post at Setanta convinces me that there's anything to this at all. It's your standard spaghetti-at-the-wall stuff, complete with the requisite "reported to be" with absolutely no mention of who it is doing the reporting; it's entirely possible that the author of the post is the only one reporting anything. It's all very meta.

So yeah, maybe Villa is interested in Victor Moses. Maybe QPR is interested as well. It wouldn't surprise me. But these rumors pop up all the time and for whatever reason they really bother me. You could just be making stuff up! Stop just making stuff up! And if you're not just making stuff up, tell us who's doing to the reporting! It isn't that hard, guys. I'd even accept an "unnamed source who spoke on condition of anonymity." Just throw me a respectability bone before you go and get my hopes up.