I'm sure you've all read the speculation linking Martin Laursen with Tottenham.
This at the same time that Olof Mellberg is being apparently courted by Juventus and AC Milan.
Both are into the final seven months of their contracts and can speak to foreign clubs and sign a pre-contract agreement in six weeks.
I just hope this isn't why Zat Knight and Curtis Davies were brought to the club.
If they were to go, that'd be another £8.6 million down the drain for Villa, a club who can sign Stan Collymore, Bosko Balaban, Alpay and Juan Pablo Angel for £28.1million and sell them for £250,000.
I still think either, or both, could stay. But I'd like to know the reasoning behind leaving their contracts to run down quite so much.
It has handed a heap of power towards the two players.
Mellberg will ineviteably be offered contracts in Spain, having played there before, and Italy.
He won't be too bothered about staying beyond this season if he spends more time out at right-back- a position he refused to play outright when asked by David O'Leary, so the Irishman once told me.
Mellberg would be a loss. He is a much more accomplished central defender than, say, Knight, but can Villa afford to offer him a substantial increase?
Mellberg, and his agent, will want to be handsomely compensated for him losing out on the potetial for moving abroad on a free. He would surely have to overtake Gareth Barry as the club's highest earner and that could cause problems further down the line.
Laursen, on the other hand, is a different kettle of fish.
Until this season he had barely kicked a ball in anger, and it wasn't too long ago that he spent a full season in Bolgna, following an operation in America, recuperating.
Now, after just three months of excellent football- and he has been good, very good in fact- the Premier League vultures are said to be circling.
And it has got me riled. Because I believe Laursen, who seemed to be complaining this week that he had yet to hear anything from the club, owes Villa big style.
I'm sure Tottenham are keen, just like a good dozen top flight teams would be on a free.
Time will tell, and I still think he will sign on for another couple of years, but this is a tricky one for Martin O'Neill.
Villa cannot leave things too much longer.