Aston Villa’s extraordinary £336.5m all-time most expensive XI – featuring ex-Arsenal & Chelsea starsAston Villa’s extraordinary £336.5m all-time most expensive XI – featuring ex-Arsenal & Chelsea stars
Aston Villa’s extraordinary £336.5m all-time most expensive XI – featuring ex-Arsenal & Chelsea stars | Getty Images
The most expensive team ever assembled by Aston Villa, from world beaters to unfortunate flops.
Aston Villa’s Premier League history is something of a rollercoaster. From European campaigns to relegation, they’ve been up and down the table over the past three decades and have experienced just about everything other than winning a title – and along the way, they’ve spent a fair amount of money, too.
Today, we’re going to look at the most expensive ‘proper’ starting eleven the Villans have ever bought. There are some home runs and a few pretty serious flops, and it’s a pretty eclectic team with just one thing in common – they all cost a lot of money.
GK: Emiliano Martínez (£20m)
Imagine if you went back a few years and told people that Aston Villa had a World Cup-winning goalkeeper who had been voted the best in the business two years running – you’d have a hard time finding anyone who’d believe you. That’s just what they have, however, after spending an initial £16m to sign the Argentine shot stopper from Arsenal, and he may well be the best gloveman ever to ply his trade at Villa Park. Not a bad investment, by any stretch of the imagination.
LB: Ian Maatsen (£37.5m)
A new face at the club, Villa splashed some of their newfound Champions League cash on the Dutch defender after he impressed on loan at Borussia Dortmund, but he hasn’t had a huge impact in his first six months in Birmingham – indeed, Lucas Digne continues to hold down the left-back slot despite the amount they spent on Maatsen. There’s plenty of time, of course, but this isn’t currently looking like an especially astute piece of business.
CB: Pau Torres (£31.5m)
An old favourite of Unai Emery’s from his Villarreal days, the Spanish international became the most expensive defender in Villa history when he arrived in the summer of 2023 and has made a good impression so far. Reliable and rock solid, he’s looked every inch of the player you’d want for such a hefty sum.
CB: Diego Carlos (£26m)
That’s a little true of former Sevilla centre-half Diego Carlos, who has been in and out of the starting line-up since signing back in 2022. It would, perhaps, be a stretch to call him a flop, but he’s been too inconsistent and error-prone to nail down a starting berth, which is rather what you’d expect from one of the club’s ten most expensive players of all time.
RB: Matty Cash (£16m)
Villa haven’t really spent much money at right-back, in part because Cash hasn’t needed replacing since arriving back in 2020. He’s had his ups and downs and hasn’t always been the clear-cut first choice, but he was the club’s Player of the Year in 2021/22 and there has been rather more good than bad. A surprise call-up to the Poland squad hasn’t stuck, however, and after 15 caps he appears to be in international exile.
CM: Amadou Onana (£50m)
The Villans made former Everton midfielder Onana their second most expensive player ever when they splashed out for him the summer, and he’s hit the ground running with a solid start and a couple of goals. It’ll take a while for him to pay every penny back, admittedly, but he’s off to a decent start.
CM: Morgan Sansom (£15.5m)
This could, if you believe some reports, be Douglas Luiz, but in the age of the undisclosed transfer fee, it’s hard to say – most stories suggest that Sansom cost something like a million pounds more, but that’s before you consider add-ons… Boring admin aside, we couldn’t tell for sure which of them cost more, so for the sake of some variety we opted for the cautionary tale. Between injury and, perhaps, a lack of talent at the top level, he made just 23 appearances and was shuffled off back to France before too long. A flop.
AM: Philippe Coutinho (£17m)
For a short while, the one-time Barcelona and Bayern Munich midfielder looked like his old self – not quite as good as he was at Liverpool, and not quite the player that persuaded Barcelona to fork out an astonishing sum of money for him, but there were flashes there. It didn’t really last, however, and a little over a year after making an initial loan move permanent, he was off to Qatar for a well-paid semi-retirement. He scored just one goal as a player Villa actually owned for themselves.
LW: Emiliano Buendía (£38m)
Aston Villa had to spend big to sign the former Norwich City man because Arsenal were after him too, and spent an initial £33m with an extra £5m in bonuses to land the Argentine. A couple of decent but scarcely sensational seasons followed before a serious knee injury wiped out the entirety of his 2023/24 season. Now back to full fitness but a back-up under Emery, and probably not worth as much as the club paid when the final accounting is made.
RW: Moussa Diaby (£52m)
What a strange signing this turned out to be. Signed at a club record rate from Bayer Leverkusen, Diaby started like a steam train at Villa Park, forged a promising understanding with Ollie Watkins as a shadow striker and then somewhat inexplicably fell away in the second half of the 2023/24 season before being flogged to Saudi side Al Ittihad for much the same fee that they paid in the first place. A real head-scratcher.
CF: Ollie Watkins (£33m)
About £5m of the listed fee for Watkins comes in add-ons, but it’s fair to assume that they’ll have to pay most of them – Watkins’ 66 Premier League goals are second only to Gabby Agbonlahor and he may well own that record outright by the end of the season. An excellent finisher and an effervescent presence up front, and one of Villa’s best pieces of transfer business to date.
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