How Chelsea and City became experts at price-gouging Premier League rivals

Getty Images - Tricks of the trade: Jackson, above, and Sávio, below, 

were flipped for healthy profits despite failing to set the league alight.

The best sellers turn failure into a profit and since almost no foreign clubs can afford to buy, those closer to home (literally) pay the price

Jackson may not have succeeded as a player, yet Chelsea could still double their money on him

30 Aug 2026 - THE OBSERVER / Sport

Rory Smith

Nicolas Jackson is a good example, but he is far from the only one. Liam Delap, now of Nottingham Forest, would be just as fitting. So would Sávio, scorer of a goal on his debut for Tottenham on Wednesday. And those are just the ones from this week. There have been plenty of others over the past few weeks; more will doubtless follow in the next two days.

But Jackson works as well as anyone. By any standard, practical and rational definition, this summer’s Nicolas Jackson market was a buyer’s one. The Senegalese striker has been characterised as a flop during his three years at Chelsea, although that interpretation is a touch unfair. He scored 24 goals in 65 Premier League games: not a sensation, but hardly a disgrace. He had been fine.

But still: at the start of the summer, nobody was in any doubt that he was no longer required. He spent last year on loan at Bayern Munich. Again: it went OK. He was a perfectly capable stand-in for Harry Kane. Vincent Kompany, the coach, said he enjoyed working with him. Just not enough to ask the club to pay the £56m needed to make his presence permanent.

All of which left Jackson in limbo, a state not unfamiliar to a good proportion of Chelsea’s squad. He has spent the past few weeks training adjacent to, rather than alongside, Xabi Alonso’s first team, joined by a motley group of players either working on their fitness or preparing for a move away. The club have been clear that while this may sound, look and very much feel like a “bomb squad”, it absolutely, definitely is not.

In football’s traditional understanding of economics, Jackson should have presented an opportunity. Chelsea should be desperate to shed his wages and recoup whatever money they could on the £32m they paid to sign him from Villarreal in 2023. The subsequent and inevitable loss would function, effectively, as a karmic reminder that it is important to invest money well. That is how these situations work. It is how they have always worked.

Except that it isn’t, not any more. Aston Villa have agreed to pay Chelsea £47.5m for Jackson, with a further £17.5m in various performance-related add-ons. Combine that with the £14m loan fee they received from Bayern last year, and Jackson has proved to be a triumph for Chelsea’s owners. He might not have succeeded as a player, and yet they may still double their money on him, and that is before anyone even mentions the word amortisation.

By the same metrics Delap has worked out beautifully too: bought from Ipswich last year for £30m, sold to Forest this week for £50m. In between he scored a grand total of one Premier League goal.

Manchester City are doubtless just as proud of Sávio, who cost £31m in 2024 but now, through the magic of two Premier League goals in two years for one of the best attacking teams of all time, can command a fee that starts at £75m and may get higher.

Both of those examples are skewed, to some extent, by the slightly curious circumstances of their arrivals. Chelsea plucked Delap from Ipswich by virtue of a release clause that made him exceptionally good value; he may always have been intended as a flip. City, meanwhile, bought Sávio from Troyes. He had just enjoyed a good season on loan at Girona. Both clubs are owned by City Football Group. The negotiations presumably were not difficult.

Even so, it is hard to understand the mechanics by which all of these players – as well as Andrey Santos, Nico González and several others – have come to attract such premium fees. Yes, Spurs and Villa’s desperation tilts the balance of negotiations in the selling team’s favour. Yes, Chelsea had the advantage of having Jackson and Delap on unfeasibly long contracts. And yes, the Premier League is locked in an increasingly selfdefeating inflationary spiral, one in which all that matters is the truth as recorded by the accountants – in which all purchases can be spread over several years, but all sales are booked immediately – and where everyone seems to have forgotten that these are actual sums of money, not mere numbers on a screen.

The teams that seem most suited to that frenzied environment are those, such as Chelsea and City, with an ability to drive a hard bargain even for players they do not actually need, who have a gift for playing a hand they do not hold. The need, imposed by various forms of financial regulation, to keep the money rolling rewards those sides who are good sellers.

That is not the only impact. Chelsea’s biggest sale, the crowning glory of their summer, is yet to come: Enzo Fernández, between now and the close of the transfer window on Tuesday, should move to City. It will be another vast, somehow nebulous fee, £120m or so for a player who has never fully justified the massive £107m outlay to sign him immediately after the 2022 World Cup.

This is not quite how Fernández saw his career playing out. Back in March, he made it clear that he had always wanted to live in Madrid. It was such a naked overture to Real Madrid that the Spanish club issued a statement making clear they were not interested in signing him, in order to protect their institutional relationship with Chelsea.

Besides, the reality is that at that level of fee – and especially when combined with his level of salary – Premier League clubs increasingly know that their market is domestic. Only four European sides operate anywhere close to the same economic altitude; not every player wants to be palmed off on Saudi Arabia.

In a sporting sense, it is strange that Chelsea would be willing to sell Fernández to a potential title rival, just as it is odd that Liverpool might consider doing the same with Cody Gakpo, or City with Sávio. But prices are now so high that there is no other option. To keep them there, to stave off the crash, there is nobody left to gouge but themselves.