Aston Villa's 16-year-old new signings goal is to ''move on to a bigger club'

Aston Villa have beaten Fulham and Hamburg to the coveted signature of 16-year-old Swede Khalid Abdo. The talented youngster had impressed during a trial period at the club and chose Villa over several other clubs whose academy’s he had joined up with expressing his joy at the move.

At first he appeared to say all the right things about his move from Swedish second division side Larje-Angered stating how happy he was with the move.

"Back in September I found out that Aston Villa wanted to recruit me, I'm happy, it feels good.

Yeah that all seems very good from the lad.

"I will play with the U18 team but hope to move up to the reserves as soon as possible. I feel I can handle the pace here so I want to take the step from U18 to reserves within a year.

He seems confident as well and seems to have a pretty well thought out plan of his goals and targets at the club.

"Aston Villa graduate often players for the first team. Their academy is the best of those I was with. I feel that I can best develop here.

He obviously remembers that a little flattery never does you any harm in England and this would be purring speech to the ears of Villa fans who will want to keep an eye out on this precocious talent. If only he had stopped attributing quotes at that point.

"The goal is to step up to the first team and then maybe move on to a bigger club."

No! What have you said? Never say you want to move to a bigger club when you have just signed for a club, who despite struggling in the league this season are still undoubtedly a big club.

There have been some choice words on the issue over the Aston Villa message boards on the web:

He’s 16, but yeah I know what an idiot I saw that on ssn, not being funny but id rip his contract up

Bitterly disappointed he made that comment, it was a silly move and even though some players use us as a stepping stone (Milner, Young etc) it is still not right to come out and say it, especially at 16, but at least he has some ambition and must want to train hard. But we shall wait and see

Erm......

Every player wants to play at the top clubs and lets all be honest we're not one of them, if he plays well and achieves his goals, we get a good player for a few years and then make some cash on him.

It's the way football works at least he's honest

What a doughnut to say that. Good luck to the kid, but if you want the fans on your side, this is not the way to go about it.

Let’s put things into perspective here. He is only 16 and judging by the quote ‘Aston Villa graduate often players for the first team’ it doesn’t seem that his English is what you would call fluent just yet. Also at 16 he has probably never had to give a major interview before and seeing as he is just a kid Villa fans can surely let this slide.

There was a lot of competition for this talent from across Europe and hopefully a small mishap in an uncomfortable presser is an out-of-context error of judgement.

Here is hoping he does well in the Villa youth team and that the comments were taken slightly out of context.

image: © ell brown