Matt Maher: Pressing the reset button is easier said than done

And yet the Croatia international’s story is very much worth revisiting for any club with designs on making extensive moves in this summer’s transfer window.

Signed from Gent for a fee of around £6million in January 2019, Kalinic was recruited to be Villa’s new No.1 and viewed as a key acquisition for a team then aiming for promotion from the Championship.

Except things didn’t work out that way. Just six weeks after making his debut in an FA Cup defeat to Swansea, Kalinic would make his eighth and – to date – final Villa appearance in a 2-0 home derby defeat to Albion. Caught accidentally by the boot of Jake Livermore in the closing stages of the first half, he left the field with concussion and was replaced in goal by Jed Steer. For the next three months, Kalinic watched Villa’s charge to play-off glory from the substitutes’ bench.

Anyone hoping for a detailed breakdown of how and why things went so quickly downhill is going to be disappointed. It is not relevant to this piece.

What is significant about Kalinic when considering Villa in April 2022 is a player most supporters have forgotten about, who has not turned out for the first-team in more than three years having been shipped out on loan to Toulouse and now Hajduk Split, remains on the club’s books and is scheduled to do so for another 12 months.

A miserable run of four straight defeats has heightened calls for a summer shake-up at Villa and judging by some of Steven Gerrard’s recent public statements, you might think the manager wouldn’t mind one either.

Yet desiring a large-scale squad overhaul and actually pulling one off are two very different things. Doing it at a Premier League club could be close to impossible.

A shake-up requires players to be sold as well as bought and it is the former which has become increasingly tricky in recent years. While being part of the richest league in world football gives Premier League clubs an advantage over European rivals when it comes to attracting top talent, it becomes a major hindrance when it comes to moving out those deemed surplus to requirements.

Finding a club willing to pay the desired fee for a fringe player and offer that player the same (let alone improved) salary is far from easy. The collapse of TV deals in France and elsewhere, and the continued impact of the pandemic, has constricted the market to the point Premier League clubs are effectively trading among themselves and a select few major clubs on the continent.

That is how you end up with an international player like Kalinic being unable to find a permanent landing spot. Ditto Frederic Guilbert, Wesley Moraes and to a lesser extent Trezeguet.

Anwar El Ghazi, meanwhile, might provide the best example of how drastic the change has been. A decade ago there would have been countless takers last summer for a winger who had scored nine Premier League goals the previous season. But with money tighter, clubs are less inclined to take a risk. El Ghazi was eventually loaned to Everton in January but has barely played and will be almost certainly return to Villa this summer, when the club will have to try to move him on again.

Since Naseef Sawiris and Edens arrived in 2018 Villa have only received transfer fees for three players: Bjorn Engels, Mbwana Samatta and Jack Grealish. Henri Lansbury, Orjan Nyland and Birkir Bjarnason all had their contracts paid up.

It isn’t only in Europe where clubs are feeling the pinch. The Championship, until recently home to several clubs willing to take a gamble on winning promotion, has seen spending reduce considerably as reality bites.

The second tier is where Albion will again find themselves next season. Destined for their lowest finish in more than two decades, the Baggies desperately need new energy in their squad.

Yet with the majority of players contracted for at least another year, carrying out the full-scale overhaul required will hardly be straightforward and may not even be practical.

Sam Johnstone’s departure will free up some room on the wage bill but Kyle Bartley and Matt Phillips are among the big earners who still have a year remaining. It is tough to see many of the Baggies’ Championship rivals being willing to take on those salaries. There is every chance Albion may spend more this summer paying players off than signing their replacements.

Pressing the reset button often sounds like a great idea and where Albion are concerned, it feels necessary. Actually achieving it, however, is something else altogether.