Aston Villa are Europa League winners, Champions League returnees, and already three weeks into the summer transfer rumour cycle. Here are the three observations that cut through.
The Rogers Sell-on Clause Changes the Conversation
The transfer fee figure most commonly attached to Morgan Rogers in the press is £80 million. What the press consistently omits is the 20% sell-on clause Middlesbrough reportedly hold on any future sale.
£80 million minus 20% is £64 million. Villa are not releasing their most promising player – a 23-year-old under contract for over five years, at a club that just won a European trophy, playing Champions League football next season – to receive £64m to rebuild with.
Under pressure to both meet the terms of their UEFA three-year settlement and reinforce an aging squad, clearly any sale must make financial sense, Villa would need to receive north of £100 million, enough to net approximately at least £80m after the clause. At that price, the conversation changes. If Rogers has a transformative World Cup and a bidding war develops, that number becomes realistic. Until it does, the articles are being written for Arsenal and Liverpool fans, not Villa ones. Any sale will only happen if the terms suit the club.
With a bit of luck, shipping out fringe squad members will hopefully financially support Unai Emery’s desire to retain Rogers.
The Business of Keeping World Class Assets
The club and fans often throw around the label ‘legend’ too frequently for ex-players, but transfer tattle seems to distort the status of Villa’s true living legend Emi Martinez. In terms of a player at the absolute peak of their global standing, playing week in week out in claret and blue, Martínez is on a different category to many a player who has graced the turf of Villa Park.
He’s Villa’s only World Cup-winning player, establishing himself at the top of the international game with the club. He said when he arrived he would play in the Champions League with Villa and win a trophy with Villa. He has done both. The legacy argument does not need to wait for the story to finish.
According to the well known Italian transfer whisperer, in terms of Martinez, there are verbal agreements in play with Juventus, but we’ve been here before.
While Martinez’s wages off the books and a potential fee would give Villa some wiggle room financially, if Villa want to stay in the business of winning, then surely the priority is to keep one of the club’s true world-class operators?
Why Emi Buendia’s Redemption Arc is a Cautionary Tale
As Villa get deeper into the summer, the question of trimming the dead wood of the squad comes into play. Some of it has already returned to its parent clubs after completing their loan periods, but last season proved that sometimes you have to be careful who you axe.
Firstly, Donyell Malen struck a great period of form for Roma, after he departed there on a January loan from Villa, and he has since joined the Italians permanently. The best example, though, was Emi Buendia, who had been a much longer-term underachiever.
Emi Buendia arrived at Aston Villa in the summer of 2021 and spent the following four years looking like two-thirds of the player we’d hope he’d be, with flashes of brilliance riddled by inconsistency. Then there was a long-term injury, and after that, a loan period in Germany, with him failing to impress at Bayer Leverkusen. In most Villa fans’ minds, he was in Villa’s modern-day bomb squad.
Yet, he ended the 2025/26 season with three or four of the best Villa goals of the campaign, his own personal goal of the season competition. His last-kick of the game winner against eventual Premier League winners Arsenal, struck at the Holte End, to a crowd that had nearly stopped believing, is one of the great Villa Park moments of the last decade.
He also scored in the Europa League final, helping Villa secure the trophy. From Leverkusen rejection to Istanbul infamy, it was a remarkable comeback story that proved even the most seemingly deadwood can rise to the top.
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The press are the worst I have ever known.
Villa are going to let emi go to juventus, you forget that juventus don’t want to spend so we will let him go for free because Villa are nice like that.
We have also seen that arsenal want rogers and understand that he will cost a lot. Villa feel sorry for arsenal having to pay so much so they are lowering the asking price to help them.
Not in the press yet, but both kamara and tielemans were free so Villa are going to give them away to any club needing a free player as times are tough.
Anyone think I could get a job as a sports journalist?
Yep, Juventus chancing their hand. If Martinez went there without a decent fee, then Francesco Calvo is obviously still working for Juve!