Chelsea midfielder Danny Drinkwater has joined fellow Premier League club Aston Villa on loan for the remainder of the season.
Chelsea have made an official statement to confirm that Danny Drinkwater has completed his switch to fellow Premier League club Aston Villa for the rest of the season. The English midfielder spent the first half of the season at Burnley, but saw his spell at the Lancashire club being cut short.
Drinkwater was one of the pivotal players in Leicester City’s shock Premier League triumph in the 2015-16 season. However, unlike the likes of N’Golo Kante, Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy, his career has panned out completely differently, with the English midfielder’s career coming to a grinding halt ever since he joined Chelsea in the summer of 2017.
The latest addition to our midfield! ?#AVFC #PL pic.twitter.com/bhgcvjtMus
— Aston Villa (@AVFCOfficial) January 7, 2020
Drinkwater started a mere 12 games in the two full seasons that he spent with Chelsea, and upon the arrival of Frank Lampard at the helm, it became clear that he had no future at Stamford Bridge. As a result, talks of a move away from the club did the rounds all summer before he joined Burnley on a season-long loan deal on deadline day last summer.
However, Drinkwater has continued to remain a peripheral over the course of the current season, not just at Chelsea. The 29-year-old has raked in just 139 minutes of action in two outings, and it is little wonder that his loan spell at Burnley has been cut short by Chelsea.
Drinkwater, though, is not going to be integrated into Lampard’s squad and has left Chelsea on a second loan stint as soon as returning to Stamford Bridge, with Aston Villa snapping him up for the remainder of the season.
Villa are in the thick of the relegation battle, which has faced a huge setback owing to John McGinn’s long-term ankle injury. With the Scotsman on the sidelines, Conor Hourihane and Henri Lansbury are the only box-to-box midfielders at Dean Smith’s disposal, which explains the need to sign Drinkwater.
Soon after making the switch to Villa Park, Drinkwater expressed his excitement at joining the club and iterated that he hopes to help Villa’s fight to remain in the Premier League.
“I’m massively excited, especially with it being a club as big as Villa. It’s a pleasure to be here and hopefully I can hit the ground running. Obviously, I want the club to stay in the Premier League, and personally I’m hoping for some game-time, which unfortunately didn’t happen at my last club.”
Set for a new journey this winter, Drinkwater would hope his career embarks on an upward trajectory following two-and-a-half years of frustration, first at Chelsea and more recently at Burnley.
