The Aston Villa star who could cost £100m as Liverpool & Chelsea circle – and whether he’s worth itplaceholder image
The Aston Villa star who could cost £100m as Liverpool & Chelsea circle – and whether he’s worth it | Getty Images
Morgan Rogers could cost £100m this summer, if reports are correct - but is he worth that much, and will he really leave Aston Villa?
If ever a transfer window failed to ‘slam shut’ it was surely this one. The January market was gently closed with barely a sound, save perhaps for some wailing and gnashing of teeth at Selhurst Park, most of it emanating from Jean-Philippe Mateta. The summer, however, will probably be rather noisier.
The Athletic have already started reporting on what the Premier League’s summer transfer window might look like and chose to highlight the likely transfer battle over Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers, who claim that interest in the 23-year-old “has only risen” over the course of the season. While they don’t name specific suitors, both Chelsea and Liverpool have been widely linked – with some online gossip columns this week speculating that Rogers could cost more than £100m. But will he move – and is he really worth that much money?
Will Morgan Rogers leave Aston Villa this summer as Liverpool and Chelsea look on?
The Athletic are certainly under the impression that there will be considerable interest in Rogers after the end of the season, and the content of the gossip columns over the course of recent months certainly back them up.
Chelsea were heavily tipped to make a bid in last summer’s window, and while the move clearly never materialised a wide range of sources were convinced that their transfer team had Rogers down as their primary target – and whispers continue to place him in their sights.
A bid for Rogers would fit Chelsea’s established business model – under 25 and with the potential to be resold for a considerable sum down the line – and they continue to have issues pinning down a first-choice attacking midfield, with Cole Palmer the only player to have firmly nailed down a starting role when fit and healthy.
Given that Chelsea have generally played with a wide formation in recent seasons, Rogers would likely be targeted as a number 10 – Palmer’s primary position – but they would only have to narrow their formation slightly to line up with Rogers’ style of play when he operates in wider areas. He isn’t a true winger who sticks to the touchline, but has the versatility to play across the ‘three’ of a 4-2-3-1 formation with minimal adaptation of the system.
Liverpool, meanwhile, have cropped up in dispatches occasionally too, and are likely to have need of reinforcements in attacking midfield come the summer as well. Few expect Mohamed Salah to stay at Anfield past the end of the season and there is space for a player who can operate on either wing or through the middle if Florian Wirtz was deployed on the left flank.
Both teams also have the money to seriously consider bids in the region of £100m, as Liverpool in particular have amply demonstrated recently. Aston Villa, for their part, desperately want to keep Rogers and he signed a new contract in November which ties him to the club until 2031 – but in the current market, long-term deals serve more to protect the value of a player than to keep them at a club for the duration.
There is certainly likely to be interest in Rogers, then, and there will likely be a fee for which Villa would part with a player who has become an indispensable cog in an increasingly successful machine. But would Rogers really be worth such a vast outlay?
Is Morgan Rogers really worth £100m?
The question is less why sides like Chelsea and Liverpool might want Rogers – his dynamism and impact in the final third make that case quite easily – but whether he would be able to live up the kind of immense transfer fee that would likely be required to prise him away from Villa Park.
Florian Wirtz perhaps sets the bar for such deals. It cost Liverpool a reported £116m to sign him, including add-ons, and provides a ballpark for the kind of output required to command a fee which breaches the £100m barrier.
Wirtz provided a combined total of 22 goals and assists in both the 2023/24 and 2024/25 Bundesliga seasons, and established himself as one of Europe’s best players in confined spaces around the opposing penalty area. Looking at Rogers’ statistical output, it’s hard to find ways in which he doesn’t fall short of Wirtz’s standards at Bayer Leverkusen – but the gulf is small.
Rogers scored eight goals and provided 10 assists in the Premier League last season across 37 matches. Not far behind, but below Wirtz who played fewer matches in both of the last two campaigns due to the reduced size of the Bundesliga.
Rogers is also a less accurate passer in all areas of the pitch who may have created 10 goals but generated an expected assist total of 5.24, suggesting that he was perhaps a little fortunate to get quite so many goal contributions and was buoyed up by the excellence of the finishing from his team-mates – Wirtz, by comparison, picked up 12 assists from 9.44xA last season. Wirtz is also the more successful ball carrier.
It makes sense to use Wirtz’s numbers from his time at Leverkusen rather than his output at Liverpool because that was where he established his value in the market, and while some may discern a gulf between the difficulty level of top flight football in Germany and England, the gap is scarcely a chasm.
Of perhaps more concern is the fact that much of Rogers’ output has failed to improve this season. Given his age, one would hope to see progression in a number of areas, but instead there has been either continuation or, in some areas, regression.
His rate of chance creation has dropped slightly and his success rate when dribbling has dipped to an alarmingly low 33%, compared to a thoroughly respectable 47% last season. Given his style of play is built in large part around his talent for beating his man and surging into pockets of space, that creates some just cause for concern.
An explanation can be provided by the fact that Rogers is playing further forward for Aston Villa this season that he previously did, getting into the box more frequently and pushing further upfield in general – indeed, he is now operating in a very similar role to that occupied by Wirtz before his transfer.
One area in which he may well have the beating of Wirtz is in his goalscoring. Rogers already has seven league goals this season and is on course to comfortably exceed last season’s tally and to go past the numbers Wirtz was putting up over the last two years. That alone may justify bringing him up Wirtz’s price range to a team that wants a goalscorer first and a creator second.
None of the gentle critiques presented above are intended to suggest that Rogers is not an excellent player – he has repeatedly proven that he can influence matches, generate chances from difficult positions and score goals from difficult positions. He’s a wonderful player who would improve most teams. The question is whether he’s worth £100m or more, and that’s debatable.
There is, of course, a ‘tax’ for buying players from English teams, and a premium on players who have proven themselves in the Premier League. Wirtz took time to adjust to a new country and a new club, and it’s only over the past month or so that we’ve seen him look like a player worth the kind of money Liverpool paid for him.
Rogers isn’t far behind Wirtz as an all-round player and may be a better goalscorer full stop. But he’s also been less consistent in his play than Wirtz was in Germany, and arguably hasn’t taken a truly significant step forward as a player since first establishing himself in Unai Emery’s first team. So is he worth £100m? It’s close – but one can’t help but wonder if there’s better value elsewhere.
Continue Reading