Player #949 for Aston Villa, Ross Barkley has played as a midfielder for the club since the 2020-21 season.

Barkley was born in Liverpool on 5 December 1993 and made his debut appearance for Villa at the age of 26 on the Sunday 4 October 2020 scoring the fifth goal in Villa’s 7-2 demolition of reigning champions Liverpool.

Villa had signed Barkley on loan from Chelsea for the remainder of the season on 30 September 2020.

Across his first 5 Premier League games for Villa Barkley scored twice including the late winner at Leicester City on Sunday, 18 October 2020 and created fellow newcomer Ollie Watkins’ first goal in the 3-0 demolition of Arsenal on Sunday, 8 November 2020.

Barkley had struck up a formidable midfield partnership with Douglas Luiz, Jack Grealish and John McGinn adding fresh dynamism to Villa’s play. However, a hamstring injury, suffered soon after, kept Barkley out of the team for most of November and December. Although the team initially struggled to find a replacement the re-emergence of Anwar El Ghazi and the development of Bertrand Traoré saw Villa regain form without Barkley’s guile.

Slow to recover from injury and even slower to recover form it became clear by March 2021 that Dean Smith had lost faith in a player that had initially promised so much and his return to parent club Chelsea at the end of the campaign appeared to be a foregone conclusion.

Barkley had scored the winner at Southampton in late January to make it three goals and an assist in 10 games however his form dipped to such a degree that the following eight games brought little creativity and no assists or goals leading Smith to blood youngster Jacob Ramsey and new boy Morgan Sanson ahead of the talented but flawed Barkley.

Only some stellar displays over the final 10 games of the seasons, with or without Jack Grealish, were the minimum requirements if there was any chance Barkley would have to not only rescue his Villa career but also that of competitive top flight football.

The failure of Barkley to convinced after his initial 10 games raised a number of questions, a friend of Grealish and an immediate gelling of styles, a simple message from Dean Smith “I told him I’ll get him in the Euros squad if he comes here and helps us win football games”, a willingness from Villa to show commitment to the player by paying the entirety of Barkley’s £110,000-a-week wages - unusual in itself - and the early season commitment he displayed with Ollie Watkins revealing that he and Barkley studied how they could exploit the Liverpool defence before Villa’s 7-2 demolition of the champions (and Barkley’s debut).

It should have added up to a memorable spell, by April 2021 it looked anything but save for that remarkable night in October.