Aston Villa are in advanced talks to sign Chelsea winger Alejandro Garnacho.

The proposed deal is for an initial season-long loan with a conditional obligation to buy, but the details remain moveable and at this stage nothing has been agreed.

Unai Emery is a big admirer of Garnacho, 22, having shown interest in the winger last summer before he joined Chelsea from Manchester United, and the Villa manager has pushed for the proposed move this time around.

AS Roma have expressed interest in signing Garnacho, but Villa believe, through Emery, they have been able to convince the player to join.

The deal would be separate to the agreement that is set to take Morgan Rogers to Stamford Bridge in a club-record £117million transfer.

Villa completed the club-record signing of Johan Manzambi from Freiburg this month, and he is considered a direct replacement for Rogers, so attention has now turned to recruiting a wide player. The Athletic reported on Tuesday Villa had held talks regarding the possibility of signing Garnacho and that he was among other options, including Paris Saint-Germain’s Ibrahim Mbaye and Crysencio Summerville from West Ham United.

The Argentina international was allowed by new manager Xabi Alonso to stay away from the start of the club’s pre-season training to secure a move away from the club.

Garnacho joined Chelsea from Manchester United in a £40m deal last summer. He struggled to nail down a regular starting spot during the 2025-26 season, starting just 22 matches in all competitions, 14 of which were in the Premier League, and scored eight times.

A graduate of Atletico Madrid’s youth academy, Garnacho scored 26 goals in 144 games for United. He admitted in April that he did “some bad things” towards the end of his stay with United, and that the manner of his exit was painful, having fallen out of favour at Old Trafford under Ruben Amorim.

Garnacho has made eight senior appearances for Argentina. He was named in their 55-man preliminary squad for the World Cup but did not make the final selection.

Rogers is set to sign a six-year contract with the option of a further year at Stamford Bridge.

The £117m fee will represent a club record for Chelsea, surpassing the £106m they paid Benfica for Enzo Fernandez back in 2023.

How will UEFA look at this deal?

Analysis by football finance writer Chris Weatherspoon

As detailed in the latest version of The Athletic’s Transfer DealSheet on Tuesday, signing players from Chelsea this window poses a quandary for Aston Villa. Any permanent signing would be deemed a ‘player exchange transaction’ by UEFA, and Villa’s sizeable profit on Morgan Rogers would be reduced in UEFA calculations to the net difference in fees paid for Rogers and, in this instance, Garnacho.

UEFA’s rule on deemed player exchanges covers a period of 45 days, and the Premier League transfer window has only 41 days left to run (as of Tuesday). Villa are in a settlement agreement with UEFA whereby they have little motivation to eat into that Rogers profit, so signing someone from Chelsea would do them no favours there.One workaround is exactly the Garnacho deal now posited: a loan move that can conditionally – and conditional is the key word – turn permanent.

If Garnacho’s move were to turn permanent more than 45 days after the Rogers deal completes, Villa would retain the full profit on the latter; Chelsea, too, would bank whatever profit they make on Garnacho without the need for adjustment. They are in their own UEFA settlement agreement and badly need to generate large profits from player trading in 2026-27.

A conditional loan would therefore be beneficial for all parties, but UEFA is also wise to clubs finding loopholes. The governing body’s rulebook dictates that “if a condition is considered to be virtually certain”, the deal must be recognised as a permanent one at the point the loan begins. If, however, “the fulfilment of a condition cannot be assessed with sufficient certainty to trigger the permanent transfer from the inception of the loan”, then clubs can record a deal as a loan initially, then as a permanent transfer only once the relevant condition(s) is met.

Any such conditions are unknown at this stage, but it’s plainly in both Villa and Chelsea’s interests for any permanent transfer to take place later. If Garnacho does move to the Midlands, UEFA will cast a keen eye over matters. But the rules retain scope for manoeuvre, if clubs are savvy enough.