Summer 2025 Transfer Window - hopes, speculation, rumours etc.

[ChicagoLion]

What a Role Model.

[Rigadon]

Oh dear.  That would be outrageously shit.

[DrGonzo]

Well as the rumour mongers have been so spot on with our transfer business thus far I'm not going to allow myself to be carried away on the tide of horrified disgust

[Clampy]

The DCL link is from The Sun who also reckon Newcastle and AC Milan want him. Doesn't sound very believable.

[Olneythelonely]

What a Role Model.

Who?

[Beard82]

Awoke to see the headline - "Villa join fight for Calvert-Lewin - Monday's gossip"

Im hoping the fight is - "You have him",  "no you have him" etc. etc.

[Dante Lavelli]

Can someone please post the content of the Athletic article which explains why we are targeting 5-9m signings?

My guesses:
1. Price range identified as being the best opportunity to ‘double your money’ by virtue of most clubs being able to sign a £20m player whereas far fewer clubs can sign £40m players
2. The players in this age group/price range are under valued abroad
3. They already have 50-100 games under their belt so have broken through the youth to adult football barrier.

[Sexual Ealing]

Why are Aston Villa making so many €5m to €9m signings?
BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND - APRIL 05:  Andres Garcia of Aston Villa runs with the ball during the Premier League match between Aston Villa FC and Nottingham Forest FC at Villa Park on April 05, 2025 in Birmingham, England. (Photo by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
By Jacob Tanswell
July 28, 2025 12:24 am EDT
Aston Villa’s player recruitment these days can be separated into two clear categories.

The Premier League club have demonstrated a couple of strands to their strategy on incoming transfers since sporting director Monchi arrived in summer 2023 to head up their football department.

The first is to sign ‘oven-ready’ players who can immediately supplement manager Unai Emery’s first-team squad. They may not always start matches, but are capable of making an immediate impact. The second is to add young recruits who have begun their senior-level careers in lesser-seen leagues in other countries. Or, as Emery calls them, “potential players”. These are not purchased to help the Villa cause in the here and now, but later down the line.

A pattern has emerged over the past 18 months with Monchi, in combination with the data and recruitment staff, working to complete deals for such relatively-unknown targets.

Each is bought for a similar ballpark figure — the €5million to €9m mark (£4.3m-£7.8m/$5.9m-$10.6m at current rates) — and usually gets loaned out, either to a third club or back to the one they were just signed from.

If one proves a success, Villa would, in the long run, turn a sizeable profit. This is pertinent in the profitability and sustainability (PSR) era.

One notable change since Monchi’s appointment is that staff in these departments are now asked to focus on specific regions. Villa are rebuilding some upstairs rooms at their Bodymoor Heath training ground, moving their data insights team into the office next to Monchi’s, making it easier to discuss private matters with him.

This branch of recruitment is leaned upon when debating “potential players” — young, raw talents needing to be refined. This area of the club’s transfer business can be frustrating for supporters, who are not likely to learn of or see the development of such signings immediately — or indeed ever, if they are sold for profit before integrating into the squad.

Kosta Nedeljkovic is a case in point.

Signed in January 2024 for €9m from Crvena Zvezda, the then 18-year-old right-back stayed with the Serbian club on loan until the end of that season.

“He was inexperienced (when Villa bought him),” Marko Mitrovic, the Belgrade side’s head scout tells The Athletic.“But with his body shape and long step in sprints, he looked very good. He had started in our feeder club in the Serbian second division and it wasn’t until September 2023 he started regularly training with our first team. He played 12 Serbian league games before joining Villa.”

Once he reported to Villa for pre-season, Nedeljkovic made nine appearances under Emery over the next few months but did not start a single Premier League game. He was loaned to RB Leipzig at the end of the winter window in a deal that gave the German Bundesliga side an option to buy the now 19-year-old this summer, indicating Villa did not view him as having a longer-term future with them. Leipzig decided against exercising that option but have borrowed him again for the whole of the upcoming season.

If Villa developed reservations about Nedeljkovic, there was greater excitement about Sverre Nypan.

They were frontrunners to land the teenage midfielder from Norway’s Rosenborg. Staff made trips there to monitor Nypan, with detailed work going into convincing him to join their project. Monchi had dinner with the family and built a good relationship with Nypan’s father.

His case was both different from how Villa recruited “potential players” and the same. Nypan’s acquisition, if achieved, would generate plenty of internal excitement at the club. Though the initial plan was for the 18-year-old to form part of Emery’s squad and build minutes, Villa were also amenable to the idea of him going out on loan in the first season.


Nypan, who has moved to Manchester City from Rosenborg, was wanted by Villa (Ole Martin Wold/NTB/AFP via Getty Images)
The longer Nypan refused to commit, the club lost more confidence that he would. Instead, Nypan has since joined Manchester City in a deal worth £12.5million.

Villa moving for Nypan fell outside the bracket of relatively-unknown players arriving at the club. He, similar to their pursuit of Toulouse defender Jaydee Canvot (Villa have made an opening offer for the 18-year-old), was on a larger financial scale than those kinds of deals.

WHAT YOU SHOULD READ NEXT
Aston Villa make offer for Toulouse defender Jaydee Canvot
Aston Villa make offer for Toulouse defender Jaydee Canvot
The proposal for the 18-year-old has not been accepted by the French side but talks are continuing.
Going into this year’s winter transfer window, Villa wanted to sign a right-back, with senior options considered.

When they were all deemed financially unviable, they looked to Spanish second-division side Levante’s then 21-year-old, Andres Garcia, who was available for €7m and regarded as a market opportunity. He was represented by the same agency, Interstar Deporte, as Villa’s Spain international centre-back Pau Torres, who have a good relationship with Monchi and Emery from their La Liga days.

Villa had tracked Garcia’s data from when he played in Levante’s B team, with his characteristics deemed as transferable to the Premier League. They had faith in their convictions, given he had accrued nearly 3,500 minutes of football across three seasons in Spain’s second tier.

His work rate and volume of sprints in a game — even if technical aspects in possession require work — suggested he can be effective in the Premier League, where he made seven appearances and five starts in the second half of last season. Bolstered by coaching and the critical fact that Emery trusts him to play, staff believe he will show more adaptation to the English game in the coming campaign.

Whether Garcia is Villa’s first-team right-back of the future is another question but if he continues to rack up appearances, there is a possibility he can be sold for two to three times the amount he cost.

Also in January, Villa finalised an agreement with Turkish club Kasimpasa for teen centre-back Yasin Ozcan to join them in this window. The 19-year-old has signed a contract until 2030, with the fee being €7m plus a further €1m in possible add-ons.

 Yasin-Ozcan-Aston-illa-
Ozcan has featured for Villa this pre-season (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
Villa’s scouting system extracted a good amount of data on Ozcan, due to him making his top-flight debut at 16 and playing 81 games for Kasimpasa to that point (he got to 94 before season’s end), combined with caps at various youth levels with Turkey.

From Villa’s perspective, it was clear he was on the path to be a full international before too long, which would accelerate his value. And they were right — he made his debut for Turkey in a friendly against Mexico last month. They noted how Ozcan was adept in different formations and positions (he can operate at full-back), while possessing the gold-dust-like centre-back requirement of being left-footed.

Emery has tried him at left-back and on the left of a back three in pre-season, which means he can add depth to the Villa first team, or to that of another club he joins on loan before the September 1 transfer deadline.

Athletic, left-footed centre-backs are simpler to make money on.

Last summer, Villa signed teenage central defender Yeimar Mosquera from Colombian second-tier side Orsomarso before loaning him to sister club Real Union in the Spanish third division for the first half of the campaign. Mosquera’s low-cost transfer was facilitated partly because of Villa’s relationship with his representatives, DV7; Damian Vidagany, the club’s director of football operations, was formerly the agency’s chief executive. Now 20, Mosquera is involved in Villa’s pre-season as Emery wants to take a closer look before deciding on a longer-term strategy for his development.

This month, Villa confirmed the €5m signing of Modou Keba Cisse from Austrian side LASK, edging out France’s Troyes for his services and so keeping the 19-year-old out of the clutches of the City Football Group (CFG), which owns the Ligue 2 side. He will be loaned back to LASK for the coming season.

Cisse only joined them last July from the Be Sport Academy in Senegal and didn’t make his league debut until February, so the data available on him is a much lower sample size than some of the other young additions mentioned in this article, but Villa’s checks indicate there’s something promising about him.

“I brought him to the second team initially,” Luka Pavlovic, who was LASK’s under-18s coach at the time, tells The Athletic. “He went on trial and I said: ‘He is the next Pogba’ — he was a midfielder then. But the club put him at centre-back, which was a great decision. He is great in training, hard-working and a nice, quiet guy.”

Whether any such “potential players” are a success depends on your definition.

Villa accept that not every such prospect they sign will turn out to be a first-team option for them. But they can, possibly, all be assets down the line — either on the pitch or the spreadsheets.

[Dante Lavelli]

That was quick. Thank you.

It seems a great policy to justify Monchi’s position.  He is ultimately responsible for gathering the data, spotting the outliers and signing players that may come good in 2 to 3 seasons.  As the article says, if one comes off then it pays for itself many times over.

[Dante Lavelli]

Am I right in thinking the “potential Players” are unlikely to be named on our A-List and therefore are outside the UEFA restrictions?

[Dave]

Am I right in thinking the “potential Players” are unlikely to be named on our A-List and therefore are outside the UEFA restrictions?

Depends on the player. If Redmond and Ozcan are part of our first-team squad then they'd be on the A-list. To be on the B list:

A player may be registered on List B if he is born on or after 1 January 2004 and has, since his 15th birthday, been eligible to play for the club concerned for any uninterrupted period of two years, or a total of three consecutive years with a maximum of one loan period to a club from the same association for a period not longer than one year.

So none of these guys will meet that criteria.

[paul_e]

In principle I like the idea of having that price range and age as targets but it's very reliant on good scouting. When NSWE first took over one thing they said a lot was that they wanted the club to be sustainable and this, along with home-grown players, is a huge part of that.

I don't like that football has become a meat market for these players but until the stupid rules are changed making 'book profit' on transfers is essential and this is how you create a steady stream of easy profit, if we can get sell-on clauses for most of them then even better.

[paul_e]

Am I right in thinking the “potential Players” are unlikely to be named on our A-List and therefore are outside the UEFA restrictions?

Depends on the player. If Redmond and Ozcan are part of our first-team squad then they'd be on the A-list. To be on the B list:

A player may be registered on List B if he is born on or after 1 January 2004 and has, since his 15th birthday, been eligible to play for the club concerned for any uninterrupted period of two years, or a total of three consecutive years with a maximum of one loan period to a club from the same association for a period not longer than one year.

So none of these guys will meet that criteria.

I think Redmond is one for the future, I can see Ozcan getting a fair amount of game time next season though with him and Bogarde being used as utility defensive players who can cover a few different positions.

[VillaTim]

How much was Rogers £8m ? a few more signings like this would be superb for us.

[Dante Lavelli]

I was thinking they’d be on loan or, if not, outside the European 25-man squad (like Malen and Garcia were last year). They can still play PL and other cup matches so could play plenty of football.

If we are looking to pull every possible lever, then spending here makes sense as there’s less restrictions.