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Since when did Aston Villa become a small-time club?

Since when did it forget a European Cup, seven league titles, seven FA Cups and five League Cups?

Since when did it shrug off its status as the dominant club in its nation’s second biggest city?

Since when did being a founder member of the ­Football League and having one of the game’s most storied teams mean so little?

Since when did it start giving footballers who should be proud to pull on its iconic jersey cheap get-out clauses?

Because the Fabian Delph fiasco says as much about Villa as it does about the player himself.

It has sadly become a club that knows its place in the cash-rich Premier League… and that place is not in the elite.

(Image: Getty)

Delph has been daft. Not to finally agree to a move that will make him rich beyond dreams but to come out with the ghastly L-word — loyal.

In an era when it is simply all about the money, footballers should expunge it from their vocabulary.

Don’t buy into this stuff about Delph feeling betrayed by the imminent sale of Christian Benteke. Why didn’t he hang around to find out who manager Tim Sherwood planned to buy with the Benteke readies?

He probably just woke up one morning last week to a kick from his heavily pregnant wife Natalie, to a flea in his ear from his agent and to the realisation that he had just knocked back a guaranteed £26million for his next five years’ work.

And it’s not like being a squad player will be too stressful. Heck, he might even win a few medals.

Really, it was a no-brainer for Delph.

But Villa allowing this farcical situation to arise is lamentable.

In pictures — Fabian Delph signs for Manchester City:

They are far from alone in using a practice that is a curse on the game. Putting a release clause in a player’s deal is simply a licence for agents to print money.

It does not take a genius to work out who told Manchester City that £8m was enough to get Delph – nor to rumble who was responsible for Benteke’s £32.5m trigger figure becoming common knowledge.

Agents don’t keep these things to themselves.

FIFA want us to refer to agents as ‘intermediaries’. If FIFA want to do something remotely useful on the subject, maybe they should outlaw escape clauses in player contracts.

It was being told – erroneously, it transpired – Luis Suarez had a £40m get-out clause that triggered one of Arsenal’s less edifying moments in recent history.

But clubs with the standing, the history, the pride of an Aston Villa should make it their own policy to have nothing to do with these clauses.

When they sat down with Delph in January, the options given should have been straightforward.

(Image: Neville Williams)

Sign, don’t sign or be sold immediately. And if you want to let your contract run down and scarper for free, so be it.

Villa is bigger than having to make sure it at least gets a piffling £8m for a player looking for a big pay-day elsewhere. And there’s every chance they will be getting short-changed by the Benteke release clause.

Villa IS a noble institution with a wonderful history, stadium and following.

It IS a big-time club.

And it’s time it started acting like one again.