Aston Villa signing Tammy Abraham proves that their biggest transfer window gamble was the deal they didn't make

Aston Villa are flying high in the Premier League. Under the guidance of Unai Emery, the second city club have been one of the division’s best-performing sides over a three-year period and are in a positive position in 2025-26.

Villa missed out on a Champions League place last May, setting out the very simplest of objectives for the new season: find a way back in. The Premier League and Europa League are both potential routes but neither looked promising on transfer deadline day at the start of September.

One day earlier Villa were beaten 3-0 at home by Crystal Palace in their third game of the season. They had one point and no goals, and their performances more than justified that return.

Aston Villa’s summer transfer window was a complexity of gambles

The transfer window itself should have been a disaster. Mired in the financial limitations imposed on them by a combination of Premier League rules, UEFA restrictions and their own disparity between ambition and income, Villa’s inbound summer activity looks only slightly worse in hindsight than it did at the time.

Harvey Elliott’s fate appears to be tied to that of Monchi, the club’s president of football operations who left the club in September. Jadon Sancho and Victor Lindelof were brought in on deadline day too, but Villa’s attacking business left them vulnerable.

Their two attacking signings of the summer were Zepiqueno Redmond, a teenager with only a handful of matches under his belt for Feyenoord and spent the first half of the season injured at Huddersfield Town, and Evann Guessand, an Ivory Coast forward who hasn’t been able to pin down a place at Villa.

Both were credited with versatility on their arrivals in Birmingham. It’s a characteristic valued by Unai Emery but one he seems to be taking a significant step away from in January. It’s a necessary deviation.

Villa’s financial situation – and, presumably, a little foresight on their part – led to the sale of Jhon Duran in January 2025. Marcus Rashford joined them on loan and ended up playing up front at the expense of Ollie Watkins in some big European games last season.

If Watkins’ nose was put out of joint by the competition, he’s had the symbolic no.9 shirt all to himself in 2025-26. Donyell Malen has deputised but Villa have been rescued from their lack of a second specialist striker by Emery’s wisdom and his players’ ability to score goals when Watkins wasn’t.

Malen’s gone now too. The former Borussia Dortmund winger has been loaned to Roma with an obligation to buy. Elliott might point to the surprising flimsiness of that arrangement but the assumption must be that Malen’s Villa days are over after just one year.

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Any transfer window is a complex tangle of decisions but the simplest version of Villa’s plan is that Malen has been allowed to leave in order to remove a player who isn’t a tactical fit and still attracts a fee to free up the chance to sign a specialist striker.

Not signing a player to be competition and an understudy for Watkins in the summer was the most frightening of Villa’s transfer window high-wire acts over the last two years.

Watkins is durable when it comes to injury but certainly streaky when it comes to goalscoring form. His all-round contribution has negated that in his five years at Villa but taking that for granted without a safety net was brave, to say the least.

Now 30 years old and likely to be seen as an eventual source of incoming cash, every transfer window without backing Watkins up is a window closer to having to replace him directly and urgently when the time comes.

Tammy Abraham is a risky signing for Villa

It’s now widely reported that Villa are to seize an opportunity to right that wrong. A shock return for Tammy Abraham appears to be imminent and there’s a lot to like about it from a Villa point of view.

As sad as Malen’s departure is, the chances of him ever starting a game over Watkins or John McGinn in two positions that would be a compromise anyway were vanishingly small. Abraham is a centre-forward – nothing more, nothing less. Coming in with his popularity already in place will be a bonus but that’s all.

Since the end of his glittering loan spell at Villa Park in 2018-19, Abraham has played for Chelsea and in both Italy and Turkey. He has performed to his potential at times but a serious knee injury has had a noticeable effect on his form.

It’s a significant risk for a club that can’t really afford to fluff it. Villa bringing Abraham in for a big fee necessarily means something will have to give elsewhere in this window or the next.

In FourFourTwo’s opinion, Emery has demonstrated enough in this season alone to be trusted by Villa supporters when it comes to the club’s pursuit of the former England striker.

The position is absolutely a priority. The identity of the player being brought in to fill it is less of a sure thing, but Villa seem to be on track despite it all. That’s Emery’s doing and blind faith is only blind when one can’t see the results for oneself.