Chelsea and Aston Villa's Transfer Habit Is Becoming Impossible to Ignore

Eight deals between the same two Premier League clubs inside four years does not happen by accident. Chelsea have signed Argentina goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez from Aston Villa for £7.5m on a three-year contract, a move that follows Nicolas Jackson going the other way just a week earlier. Between them, Chelsea and Villa have now exchanged as many players - permanent or loan - since 2022 as any other pair of clubs in the division; only Chelsea's business with Brighton matches that total. The fee for Martinez is modest by modern standards. The scale of the wider relationship it sits inside is not.

How the pipeline opened

The dealing traces back to the summer Chelsea changed hands. New owners BlueCo took charge of the club and, within months, signed midfielder Carney Chukwuemeka away from Villa for £20m. Ian Maatsen went to Villa Park for £37.5m, Omari Kellyman arrived at Stamford Bridge for £19m, and Axel Disasi joined Villa on a £5m loan.

A summer of repeat business

This year has produced four transfers on its own. Morgan Rogers left Villa for Chelsea in a £117m deal, Alejandro Garnacho joined Villa on loan carrying a conditional obligation to buy worth around £43m, Jackson moved to Villa for £65m, and now Martinez has followed him to west London for £7.5m.

Martinez, a World Cup winner in 2022, made 256 appearances for Villa after arriving from Arsenal in 2020 and was part of the squad that won last season's Europa League. "Coming to Chelsea, for me and my family, was an easy decision to make and I'm just over the moon," Martinez said, adding that he couldn't wait to get started and that he wants to keep winning wherever he goes and bring that mentality to his new club.

Where the money has gone

Since 2022, Chelsea have paid Villa £163.5m in transfer fees for players such as Morgan Rogers. Villa's fees to Chelsea for players including Ian Maatsen and Nicolas Jackson have run lower overall, even though the number of transfers between the two clubs has stayed roughly even. Whichever way individual deals break down, the money has clearly flowed more heavily in one direction than the other.

Two owners on the phone

There's a specific reason Villa keep coming back to the same trading partner rather than simple market overlap. Chelsea co-owner Behdad Eghbali and Villa owner Nassef Sawiris have built a close personal rapport and speak directly when transfer business between the clubs is on the table, a link that has run across several windows, including Rogers' move this summer. That said, Chelsea's path to Rogers wasn't uncontested - Arsenal also tried to sign him, and by most accounts the final choice came down to the player himself.

Uefa retains the power to look more closely at transfers completed between the same two clubs inside a 45-day window. Garnacho's loan to Villa was completed just two days after Rogers signed for Chelsea, while Jackson's permanent switch went through 38 days after that same Rogers deal. None of that timing proves the transfers were linked, and each club has a separate explanation available: Villa had tracked Jackson for a long time, partly because he had previously worked with head coach Unai Emery at Villarreal, while Chelsea maintain their interest in Martinez stood on its own - the goalkeeper had reportedly been on Juventus's radar earlier in the window before a finger injury got in the way of that move.

Not new, but faster than before

Chelsea and Villa have exchanged players long before this era - Tammy Abraham, Ross Barkley, Danny Drinkwater, Ryan Bertrand, Steve Sidwell and Andy Townsend all moved between the two clubs during the Premier League years, and John Terry joined Villa once his Chelsea career ended. What's different now is the pace. According to one source, several club executives elsewhere in the league have privately questioned how frequently the two clubs do business, particularly given the financial rules both are navigating domestically and in Europe. Nobody has suggested either club has broken those rules, and BBC Sport has said it approached both clubs for comment on the pattern.

Chelsea's appetite for domestic trading isn't limited to Villa, either. Looking only at the 15 clubs who have stayed in the Premier League continuously since 2022, and counting every permanent and loan move between them, Chelsea sit level at the top with eight deals against both Villa and Brighton. Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest follow on six, with Arsenal and Chelsea also linked on five. Chelsea appear in six of the ten busiest pairings in the entire division - a pattern that lines up with the turnover that followed BlueCo's takeover, a deal worth £4.25bn that brought Roman Abramovich's 19-year ownership to an end.

Why buying from a rival within the league still makes sense

Domestic trading is common across the Premier League for reasons that go beyond any single relationship, and money is usually top of the list. Premier League clubs generally have deeper pockets than most sides elsewhere in Europe, so another team in the same division may be one of the few buyers able to meet a selling club's price and wage demands. Buying domestically also cuts down on recruitment risk, since a player's form and habits are already well documented by rival scouts. None of that fully explains why Chelsea and Villa specifically have traded so often, though - even set against a league where this kind of business is routine, the pace between these two stands apart.

Whether that pace continues probably depends on how closely the rest of the division keeps watching. No rule has been broken. But eight deals in four years, and a pair of owners who talk directly to one another about transfer business, is the sort of pattern that invites another look every time these two clubs return to the market together.

Research: This article uses the archived evidence supplied for this story. Story inspiration: BBC Sport's original report.