Aston Villa’s Jhon Duran is the talk of this midweek’s football after scoring a late winner for Aston Villa against Bayern Munich last night.
It was a glorious moment as Villa Park erupted to see a first European victory in decades – it took us back in time to when Champions League nights were fresh at Stamford Bridge back in the early 2000s.
This followed Duran’s continued impressive cameos off the bench this season and last. For some Chelsea fans it’s a painful sight, as we came so close to signing him in the summer.
There was a moment where it all seemed a done deal, but in the end it fell through.
Speaking on his Youtube channel today, Fabrizio Romano had more details about exactly what went wrong:
“Jhon Durán was really, really close to becoming a new Chelsea player at some point over the summer, before the Euros,” Romano explained.
“Chelsea and Aston Villa almost agreed on every turn of deal for Jhon Duran to Chelsea, and Gallagher to Villa. But Gallagher didn’t agree to join Villa and the deal collapsed.”
‼️Jhon Durán was really, really close to becoming a new Chelsea player at some point over the summer, before the Euros.
Chelsea and Aston Villa almost agreed on every turn of deal for Jhon Duran to Chelsea, and Gallagher to Villa. But Gallagher didn’t agree to join Villa and the… pic.twitter.com/RRJD0yxPDH
— Vince™ (@Blue_Footy) October 3, 2024
Chelsea miss out on bargain backup
Things are going well up front for Chelsea. Nicolas Jackson is playing well, Christopher Nkunku is putting pressure on as the backup. But it’s still a gut punch to have missed out on Duran, at least in financial terms. Villa were pretty willing to let him go, knowing that Ollie Watkins was their first choice.
Now a bid for Duran is likely to cost a lot more than the £40m or so that was being quoted a few months ago.
On the other hand, seeing as this collapsed over the Conor Gallagher element of the deal… we’d rather have Conor doing well in La Liga than for our Champions League rivals Villa.
