Aston Villa’s striker swap is almost complete, with Nicolas Jackson on the verge of signing from Chelsea in a deal worth up to £65m, while Ollie Watkins gets ready to complete his move to Al Hilal for around £51m.
The Athletic first reported Villa's agreement for Jackson, which comprises an initial fee of £47.5m and up to £17.5m in add-ons, while Fabrizio Romano confirmed the agreement for Watkins to move to Saudi Arabia, which is for £50m up front with around £1.3m in add-ons.
Watkins made it clear he wished to make the move, and missed Villa’s 4-0 defeat to Brighton on the opening day of the Premier League season.
Despite him returning to training on Monday and apologising to his teammates, and Villa’s protestations that they did not want to sell the England international, it always felt like a question of when, not if, he would leave the club.
In truth, Villa have done extremely well to extract upwards of £50m for a player who turns 31 this year and only had two years left on his contract.
Back in March when he was on a run of just one goal in ten Premier League games, that would have felt impossible. Of course, it helps when the buyers are Saudi.
To close the book on Watkins: it is truly a shame that for many, he will be remembered for how his time at Villa ended, under a dark cloud of reports he refused to train and play for the club.
Hopefully time will heal those wounds for the fanbase and give way to the fact he is Villa’s Premier League record goalscorer and was a huge part of the team that produced silverware for the first time in 30 years.
Spinning forward to Jackson, the Senegalese striker’s move to Villa has felt like the worst kept secret in football all summer, with the club’s interest known well before there was any concrete reporting around a potential Watkins departure.
Jackson has previously credited Unai Emery with teaching him “everything” when the pair were together at Villarreal, and Villa are believed to have tried to sign him multiple times before finally getting their man this time around.
Now 25, Jackson is still rough around the edges, but even though his time at Chelsea did not ultimately work out, he scored 24 goals and ten assists in 65 league appearances. Last year on loan at Bayern Munich he scored eight goals in 23 league games, only 12 of which were starts.
He has drawn ridicule at times for some missed chances, but every striker has them, and Watkins had plenty.
What is encouraging is that he outscored his expected goals (xG) last season for the first time since the 2022/23 campaign, and more importantly, he gets so many chances due to his excellent movement that the misses are less important.
He also projects to provide much more in possession than Watkins did. Jackson’s ability to link play in the final third and his threat on the counter attack will be a real asset to Villa. Too many times in the last couple of years promising moves would break down when the ball went to Watkins.
This may not be a popular opinion within the fanbase, but Jackson should be an upgrade on Watkins.
Many of Villa’s signings this summer are projections, with the hope that they can grow into fitting replacements for key players who left. Jackson is not that, and back under Emery’s tutelage, it is hard to imagine him failing at Villa.
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