The £42m wonderkid on Chelsea’s radar that could spoil Aston Villa’s summer plans

It was a story that seemed to come out of leftfield when it first emerged a couple of weeks ago, but it’s become abundantly clear since that Chelsea’s interest in Colombian striker Jhon Durán is sincere – and while negotiations over a deal with Aston Villa continue, the Birmingham club will likely already be planning how to spend the money they’d earn. A new report from Spain, however, suggests that they probably shouldn’t assume that the deal will get done.

According to Relevo, Chelsea have made three separate offers for another young striker that they’re clearly keen on – Atlético Madrid’s Spain Under-21 international forward Samu Omorodion, who only moved to the capital last summer before spending the season on loan with relegated Alavés. At 20 years old, he scored nine goals over the course of the 2023/24 season and did enough to attract attention from Stamford Bridge.

Relevo claim that the highest bit – which was rejected – went as high as €50m (£42m), and although it isn’t clear how much of that may have been made up by incentives and clauses rather than cold hard cash, it says a lot about how highly regarded he is at the Metropolitano that Atlético turned it down.

But why are Chelsea so keen? The first thing that stands out when watching Omorodion play is that he is fast – seriously fast. He’s been leaving defenders for dead all season in La Liga and his technique is sound enough that he can dribble at good pace too, but it’s off the ball where he really shines.

Not only is he more than capable of stripping centre-halves for speed, his late movement is very smart and he’s developing into the kind of player who will suddenly ghost away from his marker at the last moment to create space for a chance. A genuine number nine, he’s used that gift to good effect this season and most of his goals either saw him breaking away from the last man and scoring one-on-one or losing his man to score a header – at 6’4” tall, he’s a formidable presence in the air as well.

There’s a fair amount of work still to be done on his all-round game and his passing can be a little imprecise and he doesn’t yet link up all that well with those around him – which would be an important skill at Chelsea, whose attack was quite compact under Mauricio Pochettino – but he has the raw talent and physical attributes to go a very long way.

As it stands, Relevo don’t seem to believe that Chelsea have much chance of luring Omorodion away from Atlético – according to the columnist reporting on the transfer story, he “wants to stay” and “has a great desire to succeed” at his current club. It doesn’t sound as though his club are in a hurry to move him on, either, if the amount of money they’ve turned down is truly so high.

Which might mean that this doesn’t have any knock-on effects at Aston Villa after all, but Caught Offside’s reporting of the same story claims that it’s either Omorodion or Durán for Chelsea, with no clear preference between the two as yet. Villa, who are having to sell players imminently in order to avoid breaching the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules, would be very keen to get their hands on the cash for a player that is a very clear second choice behind Ollie Watkins.

As it stands, it looks as though Villa are reasonably likely to get what they want – Chelsea have been willing to spend absurd sums on unproven players in the past, but Atlético don’t seem to want to play ball and the money involved would have to be almost nonsensical. But if anything changes over the coming weeks, then it could have a chain reaction that puts Villa’s plans into a tailspin, and restrict what they can spend on other, more important areas of the squad.