Aston Villa have not been shy when it comes to spending significant amounts of money on bringing new players to the club over the past few years.

As is the case with a lot of clubs who are particularly active in the transfer market, not every player that joins ends up proving their worth on the pitch.

One player that falls into this category for the Midlands club is striker Wesley.

He made the move to Villa Park back in the 2019 summer transfer window from Belgian side Club Brugge in a deal worth a reported fee of £22m.

His debut campaign in England turned out to be a very unfortunate one for him, after scoring just five goals in 21 Premier League matches, the Brazilian suffered a severe knee injury in January 2020 that kept him out of action for a whopping 15 months.

This season, after making a one-minute cameo in Villa's 2-0 win against Newcastle United back in August, the striker returned to Brugge on a loan deal but only made six appearances before moving back to his home country in January for another temporary spell, this time with Internacional until the end of the campaign.

In December 2019, a few months after making his big-money move to the Midlands, Transfermarkt rated the 25-year-old's value listed at £27m, but following a torrid few years, it now stands at just £5.4m.

That shows a significant decrease of 80%, presumably as a result of the lack of game time at Villa due to his injury as well as his disappointing spell back at Brugge.

Taking all of this into account, it's safe to say that the centre-forward, who is currently picking up a weekly wage of £46k-per-week according to Salary Sport, has not exactly repaid the hefty transfer fee that Wes Edens and Nassef Sawiris splashed out for him.

Having been labelled as a potential "burden" for the club in the past by Paul Robinson due to his lack of consistency in front of goal, Wesley has a big challenge ahead of him if he wants to convince Steven Gerrard that he has a future at Villa Park and can be an important figure for them.

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