Alan Hutton has been offered a route back into the first team at Aston Villa after being told that all players contracted to the club will be made available for selection.
The Scotland defender was informed last season that he would never play for the club again as Villa sought to make cuts to the playing budget.
The 29-year-old - whose £40,000-per-week contract runs until next summer - spent time on loan at Nottingham Forest, Real Mallorca and Bolton Wanderers. He has not played in the Barclays Premier League since May 2012.
The circumstances at Villa Park appear to have changed, however, as owner Randy Lerner attempts to sell the club and Hutton has been instructed to report for pre-season training after the summer break.
"Everybody is even now, everybody's level," said Paul Lambert, the Villa manager. "It's public what's happened in the past and now everyone is on the same level playing field. Everybody knows the club is up for sale and it's going to need everybody to pull in the same direction."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article