Forget Isak's £125m Liverpool move – Aston Villa made the best deal of transfer deadline day
Alexander Isak’s move to Liverpool might get the headlines - but Aston Villa did the best piece of business on transfer deadline day.
As soon as Newcastle United finally caved in and accepted Liverpool’s record-breaking £125m offer for Alexander Isak, there was only going to be one headline on transfer deadline day – but for all that they’ve spent and for all the quality they’ve acquired, it may be that the best deal any team made on Monday saw involved a player that was leaving Anfield instead.
Aston Villa haven’t exactly had the best start to the new season. After three Premier League games, they have managed the sum total of zero goals and a desperate 3-0 defeat to Crystal Palace at the weekend exposed a team that lacked creativity, threat in the final third and the means to hold on to possession. Harvey Elliott might offer all of the above for just £35m.
Why Aston Villa badly needed Harvey Elliott
While Aston Villa’s goalless start to the campaign doesn’t entirely reflect their play in the final third, they have still only generated only 2.5 expected goals’ worth of chances – less than every other team in the Premier League save for Wolverhampton Wanderers.
At the heart of the problem has been a lack of creativity and penetration behind Ollie Watkins. John McGinn leads the expected assists charts with a respectable 0.7xA from his three appearances, but the rest of the team has failed to find routes to goal. Morgan Rogers has been out of sorts and there has been little to work with out wide.
Elliott could, in theory, resolve that problem quickly. While Arne Slot struggled to find a role for the dynamic young playmaker, he was still exceptional when given chances, creating an average of over 4.5 shooting chances per 90 minutes last season and scoring at the equivalent rate of twice every three matches.
Between a passing range that’s both exceptionally broad and accurate and his knack for finding space between defenders in the attacking phase, Elliott can unlock defences with regularity whether he plays as a central midfielder, as a winger or as a number ten.
READ MORE: The Wonderkid Power Rankings - the Top 10 best young players in the Premier League right now
He demonstrated that talent for breaking games open during the European Under-21 Championship in June, scoring five goals for England including four in the knock-out rounds and the opener in the final against Germany. He was sharp, incisive, and lethal in the final third – not just a fine playmaker but a much more dangerous player in the penalty area than he perhaps gets credit for.
With Rogers installed as the number ten behind Watkins, it’s likely that Unai Emery will use Elliott down the right flank, largely where he operated for England in Slovakia, albeit in a narrower position than he is likely to take up at Villa Park where the wing-backs overlap a little less aggressively than they do under Lee Carsley. It’s a position in which Villa could use some spark.
Leon Bailey has been shipped off to AS Roma after struggling to replicate his form from the 2023/24 season, the spark provided by Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio is gone, and while Evann Guessand and Donyell Malen may yet prove to be fine Premier League players, it’s reasonable to assume that adding Elliott to the Villa squad will produce more chances and more goals. It goes without saying that that’s a minimum requirement if Villa are to turn things around and challenge for European qualification once more.
The details of the Elliott transfer make it a true success
While the quality and potential of Elliott are impressive, the real reason that the deal stands out from much of the rest of the business done on transfer deadline day is the price tag.
Elliott arrives on loan with an obligation to buy next summer, with the total cost of the package set to be £35m – by the standards of the modern market, something of a bargain for a player who has both proven Premier League quality and plenty of years ahead of him. For a 22-year-old, it looks like a remarkable bargain.
While Liverpool may have made the headlines by signing Isak for a vast sum, they are ultimately adding riches to an existing embarrassment – and their high-profile pursuit of the Swede seems especially strange in light of their signing of Hugo Ekitike, a forward with a remarkably similar profile and style of play to Isak.
Not that Isak won’t make them better, but the difference that £125m of forward is likely to make to an already exceptional side is, perhaps, likely to be less significant that the impact that Elliott could have at Villa Park at around a quarter of the price.
Liverpool have ameliorated some of the damage by including both sell-on and buy-back clauses in the deal, which should ensure that they still get something approaching decent value on the sale of a player whose talent was rather wasted in Slot’s system – but there is no question that Villa end up on the winning side here.
Not only do they get a fine player to fill a position of need, but also a player whose value could easily skyrocket if he fulfils his vast potential. Few deadline day deals meet both footballing and economic requirements quite so well. Aston Villa may not have had the ideal start to the season, but Monchi has earned his salary with this signing.