Chelsea and Villa PSR summer buys with double-quick January exits scream modern football

Chelsea signed Joao Felix for £43m to grease the wheels of a £34m Conor Gallagher deal. Now he’s off. Along with these five other signed last summer, gone already transfers…

Cameron Archer (Sheffield United to Aston Villa to Southampton)
Aston Villa have done some damned fine business with Cameron Archer, somehow persuading Sheffield United to pay £18m for his services in the summer of 2023 on the back of 11 goals for Middlesbrough in the Championship. The clue was in the last part of that sentence as Archer then scored just four goals in the Premier League for one of the worst teams we have seen in modern top-flight times.

Villa had cleverly included a relegation buy-back clause of £14m and just 36 days later, Southampton decided that those four Premier League goals were worth £15m. Two goals and just a few months later they tried and failed to send him on loan to Leeds United, which is a shame because a potential double entry onto this list made us come over all unnecessary.

Leeds boss Daniel Farke said: “It means he doesn’t belong to the core group to the 17 or 18 players that are important to this side. Does a player that doesn’t make it into the top 17, 18 players in the bottom half of the Premier League really improve Leeds? Difficult I would say.”

Ouch. But kudos to Archer because it’s quite an achievement to appear for two of these worst-ever Premier League teams.

Jaden Philogene (Hull City to Aston Villa to Ipswich Town)
Modern football this. When Aston Villa sold Jaden Philogene to Hull City in the summer of 2023 for £5m, they included not only a 30% sell-on clause but a ‘matching rights’ deal. So just one excellent Championship season later, when Ipswich Town bid £18m for his services, Villa stepped in and bought him for £13.5m (£18m minus the sell-on fee) instead.

It seemed like a purely financial decision until early October, when he was randomly picked to start a Champions League win over Bayern Munich. You can never take that away. By the end of the month, two stupid yellow cards in five minutes against Fulham probably sealed his fate.

So in January, after two Premier League starts, no goals, no assists and one red card, Ipswich Town were desperate enough to pay £20m. Conclusion: Villa are very, very good at this sh*t.

Joao Felix (Atletico Madrid to Chelsea to AC Milan)
Modern football this x 12. In order to grease the wheels on the £34m exit of Conor Gallagher, Chelsea agreed to sign former £100m-plus footballer Joao Felix for £43m. Which makes no sense unless you understand that the Gallagher fee renders as a lump sum in the books but the larger sum ‘paid’ for Joao Felix will be spread over the next five years. A penny for his thoughts on being used as a pawn.

Three Premier League starts later and he was keen to get the f*** out of dodge and play some football not in the Conference League. AC Milan have obliged, paying a £5m loan fee. Now to find a chump to take him for another six years until that £43m outlay looks like a bargain.

Renato Veiga (FC Basel to Chelsea to Juventus)
Just a few months into a six-year contract with Chelsea, Portuguese international centre-half Veiga started making noises about wanting to leave the club and play as a centre-half. Apparently, one Premier League start as a defensive midfielder was not scratching all his itches, and nor was being the chosen left-back in the Blues’ shadow squad for the Conference League.

“If there is a player that wants to play in just one position, they are going to struggle. They have to learn to play in different positions because it’s a good thing for the player and the club,” said Enzo Maresca. Two weeks later he was playing centre-half for actual Juventus, with Chelsea of course claiming a loan fee. Some Chelsea fans are not happy.

Lloyd Kelly (Bournemouth to Newcastle United to Juventus)
“I think we’re in the world, and we have been this window of trying to manage PSR and trying to make decisions that benefit us in the long-term, and this is one of those decisions,” said Newcastle boss Edie Howe, basically admitting that the decision to sell Kelly was absolutely nothing to do with football and everything to do with a £3m loan fee and the obligation for a £12m permanent transfer for a player who joined for nothing in the summer.

It was basically free money for a player who was Newcastle’s second-choice left-back and fifth-choice centre-back. Nobody expected Dan Burn to be this good.

Ben Brereton Diaz (Villarreal to Southampton to Sheffield United)
The exception to the ‘this sounds dodgy, is this a club walking a PSR tightrope, by any chance?’ theme is an old-fashioned tale of a newly-promoted club signing a striker for £7m on the back of six Premier League goals for the aforementioned ‘one of the worst teams in the history of the Premier League’ Sheffield United.

Quite why Southampton thought they could sign Archer and Brereton-Diaz and be anything other than gash is a mystery, but sign him they did. Just four Premier League starts later, he has re-joined Sheffield United on loan, scoring a goal against Derby in his third appearance. The Blades reportedly have a £10m option to buy, so see you next year in this very same feature, fella…