Aston Villa star striker Jhon Duran has turned heads perhaps more than any other young striker in European football this season, scoring 7 goals in just around 600 Premier League minutes for the Villains this season, even pushing Ollie Watkins for playing time.
Watkins’s all-around game leaves him undisputed at the top of the Villa pecking order, so there are big club around Europe angling to try and convince Duran to start for them.
This past summer, Aston Villa successfully held off significant interest in the 21-year-old marksman, including particularly heavy interest from Premier League rivals West Ham.
Aston Villa have benefited from backing Duran since then and have perhaps the world’s next great striker on their hands. As such, they value him even more highly than they did this summer when they were asking for over 50 million pounds.
According to Ben Jacobs, Aston Villa are indeed holding out for an 80 million pound asking price for Duran, who has recently generated interest from a PSG side that is looking to upgrade on Randal Kolo Muani, who has been linked to a number of Premier League sides this winter – most prominently Tottenham.
Jacobs says that Villa’s valuation of Duran stands in the way, but that PSG are hoping they can use either Kolo Muani or even Marco Asensio to help lower the asking price.
Even then, Jacobs reports that the overall package sent by PSG to Aston Villa for Duran is still at least 25 million pounds away from the 80 million pound valuation.
That report implies an overall offer of 55 million pounds that would have even been rejected anyway this past summer, because it would have been comparable to the offers submitted by West Ham.
Aston Villa know they have something special in Duran. It’s highly unlikely they are interested in Asensio despite the fact that he is always linked to them, seeing as how he hasn’t been good since tearing his ACL about five years ago.
Kolo Muani is even less appealing, in a way, because his valuation from PSG will be even more inflated after an initial 95 million euro investment that has obviously failed to pan out.
Aston Villa also know that PSG have the money to exceed 80 million pounds if they are serious about signing Duran, seeing as how they spent more money on a less appealing player in Kolo Muani.
There is no way Aston Villa should be swayed by the players PSG are offering, and they should, quite frankly, feel insulted by the fact that the opening offer is such a lowball one.
