Reports: Kilgallon To Blackburn With Villa's James Collins Coming In?

There could be some movement on the defensive front as according to several reports in the last few days it's a case of one in and one out at the Stadium Of Light.

It emerged last night that Matt Kilgallon's phoenix-like return to the first team, and to football in general has put him as a top target for newly relegated Blackburn Rovers. Kilgallon was pretty much a forgotten man for a large chunk of last season, and the season before. Quite literally in fact as many fans, including myself genuinely forgot he existed.

He managed to injure himself prior to the rest of the first team squad jetting off to Korea for the Peace Cup this week, and having remained on Wearside, it seems Blackburn are interest in taking him off us. Despite some very decent performances for us towards the back end of the season, eventually these tailed off with a nightmare game against Bolton Wanderers. Should Killa be moved on, he shouldn't be missed too much as we're well stocked defensively.

Yes, we're well stocked defensively. You've got Wes Brown, John O'Shea, Michael Turner, Titus Bramble, Carlos Cuellar and then youngsters like Louis Laing and John Egan to contend with. So why is it we're all of a sudden being linked with Aston Villa's centre-half James Collins?

The earlier link this summer to Real Mallorca defender Ivan Ramis seems far-fetched enough, and this seems to be just as unlikely as having pointed out above, the middle of defence is one area we don't really need to worry about at this stage.

It seems it could be just another one of these 'out-of-favour player linked with former manager' type things to us here, and we'd find it extremely unnerving if a) we signed Collins who isn't exactly a world-beater or better than what we have currently and b) Martin O'Neill decided that this was an area we really need some help, because it isn't.

Villa may well have just signed Ron Vlaar from Feyenoord, pushing Collins out of the first team places at the club, but there are surely better fits for him than us, where first team football would be far, far from guaranteed.

The only positive of this could be that Collins only has one year remaining on his contract, and could be bought on the cheap, but even then, why would we with promising youngsters and the likes of Titus Bramble who can fill in when needed? Collins would surely become fourth choice to contend for a place, and third at very, very best.

Kilgallon out? Sure, why not. It seems possible at least. Collins in? Deary, I do hope not. We've more than enough capable defenders, even with there is a loss of our noted Rabona enthusiast.