Aston Villa have announced that four players will leave the club upon the expiry of their contracts this summer.
The Villans provided a squad update on their official club website this morning which confirmed that Jodie Hutton, Nat Haigh, Shania Hayles and Sophie Haywood are leaving The Banks’s Stadium.
All four players were members of the Aston Villa side which successfully secured promotion to the Barclays FA Women’s Super League in 2019/2020 on a points per game basis following the early curtailment of the campaign due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
The quartet made just 18 Barclays FA Women’s Super League appearances between them this season with 13 of those outings being made by attacker Hayles. Midfielder Haywood has been sidelined for a lengthy period with an Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) injury while defender Haigh spent the second half of the season on loan at FA Women’s Championship side Coventry United, helping the club retain their elite status.
The increased competition in the Aston Villa squad this season made it difficult for some of the departing players to nail down places in the team but they leave The Villans as club legends after writing their names in history as promotion winners and members of a team which crucially survived their first top flight season in 2020/2021.