Player #882 for Aston Villa, Adama Traoré Diarra, known as Adama Traoré, played as a winger for the club in Villa’s Premier League relegation season of 2015-16 and during the Football League Championship campaign of 2016-17, making twelve appearances and scoring once.

Traoré was born in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain, on 25 January 1996 and was signed from FC Barcelona for a breathtaking fee of €10.00m for an unproven teenager. Traoré was one of a series of controversial signings undertaken ostensibly under the leadership of Tim Sherwood but in truth driven by the sheer idiocy of Sporting Director Hendrik Almstadt and Director of Scouting and Recruitment Paddy Riley. Two names that would be painted into Villa folklore for their footballing illiteracy and ultimate responsibility for Villa’s first relegation in three decades.

Indeed, Traoré’s arrival was one of several sub-standard Villa signings that maligned the club throughout the 2015-16 campaign and drove Villa to their first relegation in nearly 30 years. Players such as Traoré, as well as Micah Richards, Jordan Veretout, Jordan Ayew, Rudy Gestede, Joleon Lescott and José Ángel Crespo were brought to the club despite being nowhere near the standards required from top-flight players, and Villa inevitably paid the price.

Traoré made his debut appearance for Villa on Saturday, 22 August 2015, aged 19, as a 69’ substitute for Carlos Sánchez in the 1-2 defeat at Crystal Palace. Traoré made his first start for Villa in the following game - the 5-3 League Cup 2nd Round win over Notts County on Tuesday, 25 August 2015, in which he scored his only goal for the club on 24’. Where it mattered, however, in the league, Traoré made just nine appearances in 2015-16, all as a substitute, and the sequence that followed was Lost, Lost, Lost, Lost, Lost, Lost, Drew, Lost, Lost, Lost.

It was indeed almost immediately apparent that Traoré simply was not good enough. A very poor man’s Tony Daley, pace and strength, but absolutely no end product. That, however, is seriously unfair to Daley, who developed into one of Villa’s finest wing players. Needless to say, Traoré did not.

With an attitude as questionable as his footballing ability, Traoré was surprisingly still with Villa following relegation, but his was a profile and reminder that nobody wanted at the club.

Roberto Di Matteo even handed Traoré an appearance, as unpopular as that was, with the player coming as a 74’ substitute for Jordan Ayew in the 3-0 win over Rotherham United on Saturday, 13 August 2016. Credit where it’s due, however, that was the only game in which Traoré was involved that ended in a victory.

Although relegation was not solely on the shoulders of a youngster such as Traoré, he became a poster boy for the over-inflated egos of under-talented players that had infected the club.

On his departure, the only tears that we shed were those of laughter that Villa had found a club, Middlesbrough in this case, to part with €8.25m for a player of such scant capability.

Traoré had proved trouble on and off the pitch and was an abject failure at Villa. It was clear for anyone who witnessed the player in claret and blue that, at best, he was destined for a career that flattered to deceive.

It was therefore with barely concealed hilarity that Middlesbrough endured his headless chicken style with no end product, only for Premier League new boys Wolverhampton Wanderers to pay a scarcely believable €20m for Traoré’s services in 2018.

Traoré had played under Tim Sherwood, Rémi Garde, Eric Black and Roberto Di Matteo.