Villa sold Watkins for £50m and broke their transfer record on his replacement the same night

Aston Villa let the striker who has led their attack since 2020 go on Friday night, and by the time the news had settled they had already broken their transfer record to replace him. Ollie Watkins was in a medical for Al Hilal. Nicolas Jackson was confirmed as a Villa player. Both things happened inside a couple of hours.

Watkins leaves on 108 goals

Watkins is joining Al Hilal on a three-year contract for an initial fee of about £50m plus add-ons. He arrived at Villa Park from Brentford in September 2020 and leaves with 108 goals and 47 assists from 278 appearances in all competitions.

He was also central to the best season Villa have had in decades. He was a near-ever-present that campaign, scored 21, and finished it lifting the Europa League after the 3-0 win over Freiburg in Istanbul on 20 May. Players do not usually leave on that note at 30, but the Saudi Pro League has been rewriting that rule for a few summers now.

£65m, and a manager he already knows

Jackson has signed a five-year deal. The fee is £47.5m up front with £17.5m in add-ons, which takes the total to £65m and makes him the most expensive signing in Villa’s history.

The link that matters here is Unai Emery. Emery managed Jackson at Villarreal before either of them came to England, which is presumably why Villa were comfortable spending this much on a striker whose Chelsea career never quite settled. Jackson cost Chelsea £32m from Villarreal in 2023 and scored 30 goals in 81 games for them, a decent return that always felt like it should have been better. Last season he was on loan at Bayern Munich.

He is 25 and he is walking into a side that will give him chances. Emery’s Villa created plenty for Watkins.

An 18-year-old from Paris is next

Villa are not finished. They have an agreement with Paris Saint-Germain for Ibrahim Mbaye worth around £47m, and the winger is due for a medical.

Mbaye is 18. He joined PSG’s academy at ten and became the youngest player to start a competitive match for the club, aged 16 years, six months and 23 days against Le Havre. He has 15 Senegal caps already, played a part in Senegal’s run to the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations final, and played at the World Cup this summer, scoring against France on 16 June.

Sign him and Villa will have two Senegal internationals leading the attack, bought within days of each other, replacing an England striker.

Where the money came from

Villa sold Morgan Rogers to Chelsea for £117m this summer, which made him the most expensive British player and beat the £116m Manchester City paid Nottingham Forest for Elliot Anderson earlier in the window. Villa had bought Rogers from Middlesbrough for £15.5m in January 2024, and Boro collect £20.3m from a sell-on clause.

Add Watkins and Ezri Konsa, who went to Arsenal, and Villa have raised well over £200m from three players. Jackson, Mbaye, Johan Manzambi and Joao Gomes account for a large chunk of it going back out. Manzambi, as it happens, came from Freiburg.

This is not a rebuild forced on a club in trouble. It is a squad being turned over at speed by a team that won a European trophy in May, and it is the sort of window that either looks brilliant next May or does not. Two of the three scorers from that final in Istanbul, Rogers and Youri Tielemans, have already been sold.

Four days left

The English window shuts at 11pm UK time on Tuesday 1 September, with a two-hour grace period for paperwork already submitted. Villa still want the Mbaye deal signed, and Watkins still has to complete his move.

For Chelsea there is a neat symmetry to it. They have taken £117m off Villa for Rogers and handed £65m of it straight back for Jackson.

Follow every deal before the window shuts