How Aston Villa signed Tammy Abraham: Unai Emery’s role, Plan B options and the striker waiving money
Jacob Tanswell
Aston Villa did not want to wait any longer.
Director of football operations Damian Vidagany and sporting director Roberto Olabe were due to travel to Istanbul last Wednesday, ahead of the Europa League game against Fenerbahce there the following night. The pair were due to hold talks with another of the Turkish city’s sides, Besiktas, over striker Tammy Abraham but, keen to thrash out an agreement sooner, they chose to fly to Turkey 48 hours ahead of schedule, on Monday morning.
They touched down four hours later and travelled to Besiktas’ Tupras Stadium. They watched the hosts beat Kayserispor 1-0 in a league fixture that night but, more importantly, saw the reason why they had come early. Abraham was taken off in the final minute of the 90, waving to and applauding a fanbase who had begun to adore their English loanee.
That evening, Villa’s delegation attempted to negotiate with Besiktas, setting out the framework of a potential agreement. The Super Lig side had already met the terms to trigger their €13million (£11.3m/$15.5m at the current rates) obligation to buy Abraham from his Italian parent club Roma, having initially borrowed him for the season last summer. Arranging an exit so soon after, without a replacement lined up, therefore, was not welcomed.
In accordance with Villa’s usual approach to transfers, Vidagany and Olabe were following the wishes of Unai Emery, the club’s manager and omnipotent footballing decision-maker. It was Emery who drove the deal and Villa’s interest in Abraham. After weeks of protracted negotiations over the phone, the Premier League side’s resolve was being tested.
Yet, as a prominent sporting director — speaking on the condition of anonymity, like others in this piece — recently told The Athletic, “A deal is always negotiated more easily face to face.”
The necessity of recruiting a striker following Donyell Malen’s departure in this same window — on loan to Roma, ironically — was laid bare in the 1-0 home defeat against Everton two days before Vidagany and Olabe made their trip to Turkey. Temporary fixes were assessed, including utilising winger Evann Guessand as a No 9, but Emery felt they needed to add a traditional centre-forward.
In Malen’s case, this had become a key sticking point. The 26-year-old Netherlands international was seeking more minutes as the line-leading centre-forward, but Emery viewed him in the second-striker role. Villa sources insisted Malen wanted more game time as a No 9 but Emery was unconvinced he could play there, noting how he struggled when without Ollie Watkins as a partner. In Emery’s system, it was explained, Villa required a striker who could operate on his own, sometimes with his back to goal and who would carry a greater presence.
But Villa had to sell in order to buy — and Malen’s exit (Roma have an obligation to make the move permanent when the loan ends in the summer) created a gap.
While there was an argument to suggest they could have waited until after the Everton match to part with Malen, the player was already keen to leave.
In a complex deal from the outset, Villa could take comfort in knowing Abraham wanted to join them,
The 28-year-old held fond memories from his season-long loan from Chelsea in the 2018-19 season, scoring 25 league goals to help win Premier League promotion via the play-offs. He was also popular with team-mates from that side who are still in the squad today.
Emery was interested in signing Abraham in 2023, at the end of his first season in charge at Villa, with preliminary discussions taking place before the 11-cap England international suffered an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee injury in Roma’s final match of the campaign that May.
This time, Abraham decided his future would either be staying at Besiktas or returning to Villa. There was an appetite on his end to come back to the Premier League, having initially joined Roma from Chelsea in summer 2021, and possibly make a late dash for a World Cup spot, but out of respect to Besiktas, he did not wish to agitate for a move.
During the weeks of impasse, Abraham made it clear to other interested Premier League clubs who enquired about his availability that he only intended to join Villa if he left Besiktas.
Increasingly, though, this felt more unlikely to materialise.
At one stage, a Villa figure described the mooted move for Abraham as “impossible”, despite persistent speculation that a deal had been finalised. Indeed, the only agreement was on personal terms and the player’s desire to join. Finding a resolution with Besiktas within Villa’s limited financial scope was arduous. Other staff at the club believed Abraham would arrive eventually, but were unsure exactly how it would happen.
Speculation surrounding Guessand being used as a makeweight in the transfer less than six months after his €30million summer arrival from France’s Nice was strongly denied by several sources. Besiktas wanted a replacement for Abraham if they were to allow him to go, but Guessand’s representatives held talks with Villa upon his return from playing for Ivory Coast at the recent Africa Cup of Nations and the impression one person in the meeting took away from it was that all parties wanted the 24-year-old to stay.
Evan Guessand was mooted as a possible centre-forward option for Villa – and later as a potential makeweight in a deal for Abraham (Burak Basturk/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
After Vidagany and Olabe met Besiktas officials on January 19, the next few days saw the deal for Abraham hang in limbo. Sources who had spoken to the player admitted there was a concern the move would collapse, with Villa exploring alternative forward options.
Villa had been in dialogue with Crystal Palace regarding Jean-Philippe Mateta, who is the same age as Abraham and boasts similar attacking qualities. To add intrigue, Palace’s long-standing interest in Guessand raised the question of his exit once more.
By the time Emery and his squad arrived in Turkey for Thursday’s match, Villa were still assessing alternative options. Reports of targeting Paris Saint-Germain’s Goncalo Ramos were misplaced, yet them happening to be in Istanbul for a game was extremely useful in that there were agents on the ground who were involved with both Fenerbahce and Villa.
They proposed Fenerbahce’s Youssef En-Nesyri, whose own negotiations with Juventus over a move to Italy had hit a roadblock, with preliminary talks held at Villa’s team hotel, two and a half miles away from Fenerbahce’s stadium and where club delegates from the home club were also staying.
Conversations were taking place late on Wednesday night, with mutual intermediaries working out potential parameters.
But those talks only served as contingencies to Abraham, who remained Emery’s main target. While Villa were closing out their 1-0 victory against Fenerbahce, the idea of a fee for the Englishman, as well as Villa’s 19-year-old Turkish defender Yasin Ozcan, who has been on loan to Anderlecht of Belgium this season, moving in the opposite direction came onto the table.
The decisive breakthrough happened on Friday, with Abraham saying his goodbyes to his team-mates in the morning and a final agreement reached in the afternoon. Villa had struck a deal for €21million plus Ozcan with Besiktas. Abraham flew to England to have a medical the following day, also completing paperwork on a four-and-a-half-year contract.
As it transpired, Villa received more for Malen (that deal is worth €27million overall) than they spent on his replacement.
Although a high earner at Besiktas, Abraham has made a significant financial sacrifice to clinch this move, waiving money to join Villa.
The plan is for him to serve as an alternative to Watkins but also, when the situation necessitates, for them to play together. This could work when Villa aim to go more direct, often in the final quarter of an hour in matches.
As an archetypal centre-forward, Abraham ranks in the top 17 per cent of strikers from Europe’s top five leagues for touches in the opposition penalty area. This season, only one of his seven league goals (from 18 appearances) has come outside the box, and that was heavily deflected.
This was an Emery acquisition, driven by him.
Nevertheless, the broader impression of Abraham is that he has started putting up attacking numbers which illustrate a return to his pre-ACL injury form. More precisely, to his 2021-22 season, when he scored 27 all-competitions goals for a Jose Mourinho-coached Roma side, helping them win the inaugural UEFA Conference League.
Abraham’s playing time has increased this term — he has already spent more minutes on the pitch than he did in 2024-25 for Roma and Milan (where he spent much of the campaign on loan), despite 19 fewer appearances. His profile as a player is the type that Emery believes can plug in and play, adapting immediately to Villa’s system.
There would have been a strong sense of satisfaction by the time Vidagany and Olabe returned from Istanbul. Abraham was in situ and the challenge of filling this transfer window’s priority position, which had brought so much turbulence, had been met.
