Holding Out for a Hiro?

As fevered speculation surrounding Hiroshi Kiyotake continues, Paul Lambert confirmed at last night's forum that Villa had made an enquiry for the player, but had made no actual bid.

The Kiyotake tale has been kept alive over several weeks due to a spectacular Twitter spat, with one side swallowing off-the-record briefings that Villa's interest in the player had ended and others scouring the internet for titbits of info that would indicate that the deal wasn't dead.

However, even those vehemently stating that the deal wasn't happening started to backtrack on Sunday when three tweets from JSoccer Magazine had the ITKs scrabbling for their phones and the media pack piling onto another easy space filler.

Kiyotake update coming now, straight from the horse's mouth - I have spoken to Kiyo's agent company, very open with info.
— JSoccer Magazine (@JSoccerMagazine) August 4, 2013

#Kiyotake cont. ... #FCN would like him to stay but seem to accpet he may leave so want at least £8.5 mill. Kiyo has been in talks.
— JSoccer Magazine (@JSoccerMagazine) August 4, 2013

Now MY thoughhts.. if Kiyo has got the idea that AVFC want him, and seems interested, better to let him go now, for decent transfer fee
— JSoccer Magazine (@JSoccerMagazine) August 4, 2013

Interesting piece regarding this over on AVillafan

Plenty of background on Kiyotake in Julie Bayley's article

Meanwhile there was disappointment on the pitch for Kiyotake as FC Nürnberg crashed out of the DFB-Pokal on penalties, despite Hiro managing to net his.

Word is that no deal is likely unless Paul Faulkner can manage to offload those players deemed by Paul Lambert to be surplus to requirements and this is proving to be problematic with potential deals for Shay Given, Barry Bannan and Alan Hutton all falling through in recent days.

The Bent deal is the biggest mystery, with the player himself telling supporters some weeks ago that he thought he was off to Newcastle, but Villa seemingly poo-pooing Joe Kinnear's statement that talks were ongoing.

The frustration concerning the bomb squad seems to be that it's virtually impossible to move players on when they are sitting on overly generous Villa contracts and it may will be that the club will have to accept pushing them out on loan and continuing to finance huge chunks of their obese cat salaries.