The £50m Aston Villa transfer that could prove to be an absolute disaster

It’s just a year since Moussa Diaby became Aston Villa’s record signing, and his return of 19 goals and assists over the course of the 2023/24 season represented a pretty strong start towards repaying the £50m-plus investment made in him – but now he may be on the brink of leaving the club already.

Saudi Pro League side Al Ittihad have reportedly opened talks over a potential €60m (£50.3m) move with “negotiations advancing”, according to Fabrizio Romano, and it looks increasingly likely that Diaby’s stay at Villa Park will be exceptionally brief.

That leaves Aston Villa was something of a problem. Diaby’s form over his first season may have been good rather than truly exceptional and he found his place in the first team less assured over the last months of the season, but he still formed a highly effective partnership up front with Ollie Watkins and was one of the team’s most impactful attacking outlets.

Diaby’s 14 Premier League goal contributions represented 18.4% of their total output in front of goal in the 2023/24 campaign. He generated the second most expected goals and third most expected assists, behind Watkins and Leon Bailey (who scored more after outshooting his own xG by a large and likely unsustainable margin). Diaby was a key part of the attack whether he was viewed as a roaring success or not.

Throw in the departure of Douglas Luiz, who has moved to Juventus, and Aston Villa are now close to losing two of their three best creative foils for Watkins, and with them a great deal of the dynamism that helped to propel them towards Champions League qualification.

Even outside of basic productivity stats, watching Watkins and Diaby play made it clear that they were drumming up a strong understanding. They seemed to naturally know the other was going to make their move and had the knack of playing the right pass or making a complementary run to draw a defender out of position. It wasn’t just that the pair both had the speed and technique to toast defenders, but also that they knew how to make space for each other.

Diaby seems keen to move to Saudi Arabia and bask in the riches that will accompany the transfer, and there’s always an argument that standing in the way of players who want to leave is seldom worthwhile – but even with an extra £50m or so burning a hole in Unai Emery’s back pocket, it’s hard to see how they can replace what they’re losing, especially with the new season starting in just a month’s time. It’s unlikely that Villa had planned for this scenario in any detail.

While they can attempt to promote from within to replace Douglas Luiz given that Jacob Ramsey seems ready to step up and take that mantle on, there really is no direct replacement for Diaby on the books save, perhaps, for Youri Tielemans, who is a better passer of the ball and more dangerous from long range, but lacks Diaby’s pace and dribbling ability. This isn’t a windfall for Villa – it’s a hole they need to dig themselves out of.

There are links with Nico Williams, the youthful star of Spain’s Euro 2024 run and scorer of the opening goal in the final, but he seems much more interested in joining Barcelona and the Catalan club seem to be pulling hard on those economic levers to make it happen. Gabri Veiga, another player who made the Saudi switch but seems to be regretting it, has been mentioned but is more of a midfielder than a supporting striker. Outside of those ambitious-looking reports, there has been little to suggest that Villa have a Plan B for this situation.

There are two likely scenarios at this point – one, that Villa find themselves scrambling for a last-minute replacement like a neglectful husband trying to find a gift for his wife on Christmas Eve. It could work out, but there’s every chance that the best buys are all cleaned out and you end up overpaying for something inadequate. The second is that they engineer a tactical shift towards a more orthodox 4-5-1 or 4-3-3 set-up which suits the players actually available better, but which risks leaving Watkins too isolated up front.

Either could work out just fine, but there is risk in both and it would not look, to an outsider, like a planned risk which has been analysed ahead of time. So perhaps the best option for Villa is to take the third way – point meaningfully at the four years left on Diaby’s £130,000 per week contract and tell him that he isn’t going anywhere unless the money starts getting too silly to turn down.

As it stands, Villa would be selling an important attacking piece for what would amount to a financial loss when you factor in a year’s worth of wages and whatever signing-on fees they paid – and while that year earned them a spot in the Champions League for the first time in four decades, selling him will most likely make it harder to repeat the feat and really make the benefits of that top four finish stick. If Villa do sanction this sale, then Monchi and his transfer team had better have something good up their sleeve.