Aston Villa are on course to qualify for the Champions League for the second time in three seasons by finishing in the top five of the Premier League.
The Villans have made themselves European regulars under Unai Emery, although they are not part of the ‘traditional top six’ and were in the Championship as recently as 2019.
They can’t go and sign the best players from the big clubs in the transfer market, but they have developed and signed unrecognized players who didn’t make it to the ‘bigger’ clubs.
Emi Martinez and Morgan Rogers are good examples of that, as they failed to make the grade at Arsenal and Manchester City respectively, before ending up at Aston Villa to become stars.
Rogers left the City academy to sign for Middlesbrough before the Villans swooped in to sign him from the Championship for up to £16m in 2024.
Aston Villa are looking ahead to the Premier League
Villa hit the jackpot when they signed the England attacking midfielder, as he has scored 29 goals and provided 26 assists in 119 appearances for the club.
Now, Emery could repeat that mastery by taking the step to sign another player who was not deemed good enough for one of the top six clubs.
According to SportsBoom, Aston Villa are one of the clubs looking to sign Chelsea striker Nicolas Jackson, who could be the first signing of next summer’s transfer window.
The report says that Bayern Munich do not plan to sign him permanently after the end of his loan period with the German giants, which has opened the door for Villa and Newcastle United to sign him.
It adds that Chelsea are willing to accept bids of £60m for the Senegal international because he is unlikely to return to their first team and that will tighten the budget of their next manager.
SportsBoom reports that Emery, who worked with Jackson at Villarreal, has been a long-term fan of the striker and could sign him as a replacement for Ollie Watkins.
How Nicolas Jackson will become Aston Villa’s new Morgan Rogers
It’s easy to call players swimming in modern football when a spell at a club doesn’t go well or that club decides to move on from a player, as seems to be the case with Jackson.
After two full seasons at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea decided to take the striker on loan and are now looking to sell him, but that shouldn’t put Aston Villa off guard. After all, Man City decided to sell Rogers to the Championship club once.
Therefore, Villa should see this as an opportunity to sign a striker who has proven to be a major threat in front of goal at Premier League level.
The Senegal international achieved the fifth most xG in the Premier League in his first season at Stamford Bridge in the 2023/24 campaign, while he ranked tenth in the 2024/25 season with 12.34 xG.
Jackson has produced an xG of 8.77 in his 13 starts for Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga and Champions League combined this term, scoring 10 goals, which shows he has been effective in limited time for the German giants.
The 24-year-old striker is not the most clinical striker in Europe, having scored just 24 goals at 30.98 xG in the Premier League for Chelsea, but he provides xG production value with his physicality, pace, and movement.
24 goals in two Premier League seasons, despite xG’s poor performance, is nothing to sneer at. Watkins, for example, has scored 27 goals in the last two league seasons at Villa, and he has worse his xG of 12.22 with 11 goals this season.
Therefore, Jackson could be Villa’s next form of Rogers as a prolific striker who was not considered good enough to land at one of the ‘six hundred’ clubs.
There is significance in the signing of the 24-year-old, who is the Premier League’s top goalscorer, and could emerge as the next star alongside Rogers if the club spend the £60m it will take for the Blues to let him go.
Aston Villa enter the race to sign the best player in the Champions League
The Villans are keen to sign an “explosive” player.
