Aston Villa have finally enjoyed lift-off, having defeated Club Brugge 3-2 in a compelling Champions League curtain-raiser this week.
Unai Emery has urged supporters and reporters and everyone in-between to stay calm and patient. Six of the players who started Villa’s Europa League final victory over Freiburg have left for pastures new, including Ollie Watkins and Morgan Rogers in attack.
Nicolas Jackson starred and scored as Villa defeated Brugge in Belgium. The ยฃ65m arrival from Chelsea looks like the real deal, someone who could play an instrumental role over the course of the campaign – and beyond.
However, Rogers’ record-breaking sale to Chelsea could be more damaging. It’s crucial that Emery and co secure the right replacement – and they perhaps feel they have in Ibrahim Mbaye from Paris Saint-Germain.
How Mbaye can become one of the best in the Premier League
Liverpool had a vested interest in Mbaye this summer, but they could not negotiate their way to an agreement with PSG, and it was Aston Villa who swooped down and signed the teenage winger for ยฃ43m toward the end of the transfer window.
Mbaye is young, but he has already established himself as one of the most exciting wingers in European football, devastating when on the move and direct in front of goal. He only started ten times in Ligue 1 last season, but scored three goals, also featuring in the Champions League and completing 60% of his dribbles.
Mbaye is a two-sided winger, competent on the right wing, but also right-footed, suggesting that he has what it takes to fill in on the left when Emery decides it is necessary.
It’s the kind of signing that Emery and co needed to make, signing a rising star with the potential to emulate the likes of Rogers in growing into a European superstar.
However, it’s not actually Mbaye, but another exciting Villan talent who might establish themselves as the Midlands club’s new version of the Three Lions attacker.
Aston Villa have already signed their new Morgan Rogers
Rogers has settled right in at Chelsea following his ยฃ117m summer transfer, and while Aston Villa have banked a pretty penny, there’s no question they will miss the England international, who scored 31 goals and provided 29 assists for the outfit.
Replacing him won’t be an overnight job, but Emery may well believe that in Alysson, not Mbaye, he has the perfect like-for-like replacement.
Alysson joined the club from Gremio in Brasileiro Serie A for a fee rising to ยฃ10.5m in January, but he could only play a bit-part role across the remainder of the 2025/26 campaign.
Retired Premier League striker Stan Collymore even remarked that Alysson is “spookily like Rogers” in his athleticism and physicality. He needs to add goals to his game, but Emery has also yet to entrust the Brazilian with a starring role, handing him three cameo roles across the opening weeks of the league campaign.
He has already matched last season’s Premier League involvement, growing into his skin as a reliable utility option. Alysson’s power and pace down the right wing should eventually see him bloom into an attacking midfielder of similar proportions – even showing with seven goals and five assists from 23 senior games for Gremio in Brazil that he shows how to split his output.
Alysson did demonstrate a degree of combativeness against Club Brugge which bodes well for future involvement. Think of him as a mirror image of Rogers, the left-footed cutting in from the right and using his tireless energy and ability to find pockets of space and there make things happen to an emphatic effect.
It may be that he needs another year or two to bloom as an elite option in the Premier League, but there’s no question that the blueprint is there for him to establish himself as Emery’s latest stroke of genius.
It’s the kind of signing which could end up being lauded widely for Emery’s sage vision. After all, Rogers joined the club from Middlesbrough in the Championship for just ยฃ8.5m – the same initial fee that Villa paid Gremio for Alysson’s services.
