appeared on the radar that August<\/a>: Leon Bailey, who was just a wide-eyed youngster attempting to make a name for himself with Bayer Leverkusen. With only five goals and one assist during the 2018-2019 season, Bailey wasn\u2019t exactly the second coming of Cristiano Ronaldo, but he showed enough pace and promise to make one think better days were ahead.<\/p>\nBayer Leverkusen decided to stand pat, keeping Bailey for two more years before selling him to Aston Villa for a cool \u20ac32 million in August 2021. Since then, Bailey has had an up-and-down career, punctuated by his 10-goal, nine-assist campaign in 2023-2024, which helped the Villains qualify for the Champions League.<\/p>\n
While Villa manager Unai Emery remains upbeat about Bailey\u2019s place in his squad, according to The Athletic, the 28-year-old Jamaican winger could be one of several players to leave the Premier League club this summer.<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old signed a new contract in February 2024, which runs until 2027. He is one of multiple players available to leave the Midlands club, including Alex Moreno and Leander Dendoncker.<\/p>\n
Clubs in Turkey \u2014 including Besiktas \u2014 and the Saudi Pro League are also keen on Bailey but Roma are emerging as the strongest suitor, after discussions took place over a Saudi move earlier in the window.<\/p>\n
While they don\u2019t speculate on a price, it\u2019s safe to assume that Aston Villa will want every bit of Bailey\u2019s \u20ac28 million Transfermarkt valuation. That\u2019s not an exorbitant sum by today\u2019s standards, but with Bailey making his home on the right wing and Roma presumably looking for a left-sided player, this rumor may not pass the sniff test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If six years is a long time in football, it\u2019s an eternity in the transfer rumor cycle. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,42805,561,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-67588","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-roma-transfers-real-imagined","11":"tag-soccer","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}