Aston Villa Complete Nicolas Jackson Deal as Watkins Replacement

Aston Villa have agreed a deal to sign Nicolas Jackson from Chelsea, worth a total package of £65m, with £47.5m of that paid upfront, according to The Athletic. 

As expected, once the deal was done with Chelsea, it wasn’t going to take long for Villa to confirm a deal with Al Hilal for Ollie Watkins‘ , with Saudi’s favourite son, Fabrizio Romano, soon announcing that the move to Al Hilal was now agreed in full.

‘Villa accepted a bid worth €58.4m plus €2m in add-ons, with the green light given and Watkins travelling this week,’ said Romano, on X.

It also makes the Jackson deal the third piece of transfer business between Villa and Chelsea this summer, after Morgan Rogers’s club-record £117m move to Stamford Bridge and Alejandro Garnacho‘s loan the other way.

There is an expected fourth deal in the marketing with Chelsea favourites to land Emi Martinez.

There was some concern after Villa’s sale of Morgan Rogers to Chelsea that deals between the two clubs could only be done outside a 45-day window, from the date of the previous transfer, not to be classed as a player exchange, which would have a negative impact on the profit they could book into their accounts. It was not an automatic tripwire, but just one of the factors at play though that tries to determine whether transfers between clubs are classified as player exchanges.

With Villa and Emery tracking Jackson for some time now, since he was his player at Villarreal, it won’t be difficult to convince UEFA that it is a move made out of necessity due to the sale of their main striker. The season’s opening game against Brighton, in which Villa played striker-less, if nothing else, can be used as stone cold evidence of that. 

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