Aston Villa could have signed World Cup winner Benjamin Pavard for a £1m fee in the 2015/16 season, per The Athletic.

What’s the word?

Having kept Villa up in the 2014-15 season, Sherwood and his recruitment staff set about attempting to revamp the club’s squad.

The Athletic claims that scouts had watched Pavard while he was at Lille, and recommended him to the club ahead of the January transfer window.

The report also states that he even travelled to the Midlands to watch a game at Villa Park, with Remi Garde then the club’s manager.

Missing football!? There's still plenty of Villa discussion going on in the Vital Villa Forum! Click here to get involved!

A £1m fee could, reportedly, have got the deal done, with the right-back ready to leave the French club and head to England.

Owner Randy Lerner, though, did not want to make such an investment, with Villa bottom of the league table, and, following their relegation, Pavard fell off their shortlist.

Regret it forever

Pavard has become a genuinely brilliant right-back since his failed move to Villa.

He left Lille to join VfB Stuttgart, with whom he spent three years, and became France’s first-choice right-back, playing every game, bar the final group match, of the 2018 World Cup en route to lifting the trophy. He even scored perhaps the goal of the tournament against Argentina in the Round of 16.

Did he really play for us?! No Villa fan has managed to name all of these obscure Villans....

Now at Bayern Munich and valued at £31.5m by Transfermarkt, one has to think that Villa’s future would have been markedly different had he ended up coming to the Premier League.

Owner Lerner should regret his decision for quite some time; Pavard, though, is surely delighted with how everything turned out.

Meanwhile, Aston Villa got one thing totally wrong in the summer!