The Aston Villa star played every Premier League game last season.
The driving force behind this success has without doubt been the excellent recruitment, with a large chunk of that being funded by Villa icon Jack Grealish.
The now-Champions League winner left Villa Park in 2021 for an astronomical £100m fee, joining the dominant Manchester City.
Today, Grealish isn’t worth anywhere near the sun that City spent, and he’s now valued the same as one of Unai Emery’s most reliable performers.
What Villa paid for Ezri Konsa
After achieving promotion back to the Premier League in the 2018/19 season, Dean Smith had one clear aim in the transfer window: to reinforce the defence.
Matt Target, Tyrone Mings, and Kortney Hause all joined the newly promoted side that summer, as well as a 21-year-old Ezri Konsa.
Prior to his move, the defender had impressed at Brentford during his first campaign in the Championship, starting 42 matches and keeping 11 clean sheets.
The Bees defender cost Villa just £12m back then, with the “high potential defender,” as dubbed by Smith, now becoming a valuable asset in the squad.
Konsa’s market value in 2024
Since arriving at the club, Konsa has been a constant figure in the first XI, making at least 24 starts every season since 2019, while also playing every game last term.
However, the number 4 has developed immensely under the Spanish coach, to the point where he’s now showcasing his ability on a European stage and potentially for his nation, England, this summer.
Regardless of whether he’s been deployed as a centre half or as a right back, Konsa has proven that he’s an “impressive” star, as dubbed by StatmanDave, over his 34 league starts.
The fact that he’s shown his versatility this season is one of the main reasons why his value has skyrocketed in the past 12 months, to the point where he’s now worth the same as Grealish.
| Konsa vs England Defenders | |
|---|---|
| Player | Value |
| 1. Rico Lewis | £69m |
| 2. Trent Alexander-Arnold | £69m |
| 3. Ben White | £51m |
| 4. Levi Colwill | £43m |
| 5. Konsa, Branthwaite, Stones | £34m |
| Via CIES’ Football Observatory | |
As you can see from the table above, Konsa is now estimated to be worth £34m by CIES’ Football Observatory, which makes him the joint-fifth-highest valued English defender in the Premier League.
On top of that, he’s the sixth-most-valued player in the Villa squad, worth the same as Boubacar Kamara, while also ranking first amongst defenders in Emery’s team.
What makes Konsa have such a fantastic profile is his ability to be just as dominant on the ball as he is off it, which separates him from plenty of his positional peers in England.
In evidence of that, the 26-year-old boasts an impressive 93% pass accuracy, 70.5 touches, and a dribbled past of 0.1 per game this season in the Premier League.
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