Morgan Rogers is no longer an Aston Villa player. It’s a tough one to take, with the England star completing a £117m transfer to Premier League rivals Chelsea on Tuesday.
The 23-year-old has been brilliant for Unai Emery, playing a defining role in the rise toward the Champions League, and the culmination of a Europa League campaign last year that led to a 3-0 win over Freiburg in the final.
Across 85 games in the Premier League, he has scored 21 goals and supplied 19 assists, and while Emery and his team have dealt with losses before, this is a big one, and they will have to hit the nail on the head when replacing him.
There is more work to do, but a deal has been agreed with Chelsea to sign Alejandro Garnacho.
Why Emery wanted to sign Garnacho
Garnacho, 22, has the potential to become a “world-class player“, according to former Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag, but he has a long way to go before he reaches that level.
For Chelsea last season, he only scored one goal in the Premier League, shuffled to the side of the squad, unable to make the desired impact after his £40m transfer from Old Trafford to Stamford Bridge.
Now, he’s headed to Villa Park, with a season-long loan deal agreed, and with a conditional buy option inserted too.
Garnacho is a gifted footballer, but natural talent can sometimes be the enemy of success for someone such as the Argentine, who needs to work harder and produce sharper results if he is going to succeed in the Premier League.
|
Garnacho’s Premier League Career |
||
|---|---|---|
|
Season |
Apps (starts) |
Goals + Assists |
|
25/26 |
24 (14) |
1 + 4 |
|
24/25 |
36 (23) |
6 + 2 |
|
23/24 |
36 (30) |
7 + 4 |
|
22/23 |
19 (5) |
3 + 2 |
|
21/22 |
2 (0) |
0 + 0 |
Rogers’ departure has torn a hole in the fabric of Emery’s attacking system at Aston Villa, and it’s crucial that he is replaced with a good-enough new attacker.
Garnacho may not be the perfect solution, but he’s got plenty of potential still untapped, and the Villans have already lined up an instant upgrade to help offse the Rogers sale.
Aston Villa could sign a bigger talent than Garnacho
Garnacho is exciting, but he only scored once in the Premier League last season, and it would be a risk to expect him to confidently replace Rogers.
Garnacho alone may not hold the key to unlocking another level at Villa Park, with The Athletic confirming that Paris Saint-Germain’s Ibrahim Mbaye is among the club’s leading targets this summer.
Mbaye, only 18, has made progress in the French capital over the past few years, and PSG would actually be open to selling him for £43m due to an overflow of world-class attacking talent. Villa had also held Crysencio Summerville in high regard, but the West Ham winger is heading to Saudi Arabia, so Mbaye could now top the shortlist.
The young Senegal international, who starred and scored for his country at the World Cup, is a jet-heeled young winger with a natural edge in front of goal. He has already played 42 times for the Parisians’ first team, notching four goals and four assists apiece.
Aston Villa could be onto a real winner by pulling this one off; Mbaye is regarded as one of the most exciting prospects out there, even described as “the next Kylian Mbappe” in France by GOAL as he goes from strength to strength at Parc des Princes.
Mbaye is breaking onto the season with PSG, but that is not the extent of his likeness to Les Bleus superstar Mbappe. His natural inclination is to carry the ball down the wing and arc inward, seeking glory for himself rather than placing emphasis on the creative side of his game.
That’s not to say that he is not a talented playmaker, but the potential for goals suggests that he could be a superstar. Garnacho, conversely, is ebbing away from that “world-class” potential when he was a bit younger, and though he could recapture it under Emery’s wing with Villa, Mbaye is the one with the wind in his sails, and it could be him who makes the bigger impact down the line, should he go from strength to strength once arriving in the Premier League.
Mbaye is an elite prospect, and someone Aston Villa must pursue. With Leon Bailey mooted for a departure this summer, this could be the prodigious addition who could catapult the club even higher up next year.
