Aston Villa enjoyed a well-orchestrated summer of business ahead of their first full season with Unai Emery at the helm.
The Villans recruited the Spaniard in October 2022 following the dismissal of Steven Gerrard, and it’s fair to say they haven’t looked back since.
When the former Arsenal boss arrived, the squad he inherited from the ex-Liverpool maestro was sat in 16th place in the Premier League table, hungry to build form and locate a source for progression.
Emery was that source, as he fired Villa to a seventh-place finish and a spot in the Europa Conference League, adding an extra pull to their presentation as a club in the transfer window.
Five new faces made Villa Park their home in the summer, including highly-rated and in-demand forward Moussa Diaby, who saw Emery’s project as an interesting place to progress.
With the four-time Europa League winner in charge of the club, Villa’s ability to replenish the side with star quality has been rectified, however business hasn’t always gone so smoothly in the past.
Rewind to 2015, and Tim Sherwood was hoping to steer his squad away from their relegation-threatening campaign of 2014/15, in which the Midlands side finished 17th.
To make matters worse for the Englishman, the club’s star player Christian Benteke departed that summer, yet the manager seemed to have a solution for his exit.
When did Aston Villa sign Rudy Gestede?
Days after the departure of Benteke, it was announced that Villa had signed Championship sharpshooter Rudy Gestede, in a deal worth a reported £6m.
It was a capture to be celebrated by Villa, as the Benin international was in demand, eyed by West Bromwich Albion, Hull City and Crystal Palace, with Eagles having a bid for the forward rejected in the January window, via Sky Sports.
Sherwood, meanwhile, was gleaming with his new arrival, relaying that he always “admired” the striker, dubbing him a figure that “certainly knows how to find the back of the net”.
After bidding farewell to Benteke, the Villans were content to have found a new source for goals in Gestede, but not everyone was sold by his arrival.
What was the reaction when Aston Villa signed Rudy Gestede?
Taking into consideration that Villa received a fee of £32.5m from Liverpool in the sale of Benteke, former Arsenal legend and pundit Paul Merson was not impressed by the £6m capture of Gestede to fill the void left by the Belgian.
As relayed by BirminghamLive, Merson said: “If you sell someone for £30m like Benteke, you have to bring in someone who is worth at least £12-£15m.
Gestede is a good player, and he’s done well, but you cannot go for a Championship player to take Benteke’s place.”
While there was truth to Merson’s concerns, there was also a hope that the 26-year-old could translate his form in the second tier into the top flight, in ways similar to Benteke, who arrived from Belgium and a level below the standard of the Premier League.
No one knew the threat of the Belgian forward until the end of his first season at Villa, in which he burst onto the scene by scoring 19 goals in the top-flight after netting just ten in the Jupiler Pro League for Genk the campaign prior.
Unlike Benteke, Gestede was a known goalscorer in England at the point of his arrival at Villa Park, having scored 20 Championship goals in the 2014/15 season for Blackburn Rovers to catch the eye of Sherwood.
There was certainly hope that the Benin international could fill the void left by Villa’s talisman, who had netted 49 goals in 101 appearances for the Midlands side, but only time would tell if he would live up to such high expectations.
Did Rudy Gestede live up to expectation?
Once lauded as “menacing” by Sherwood, Gestede made a good first impression at his new club, scoring on his debut against Bournemouth in a 1-0 win for the Midlands side.
The highs of an opening day goal were short-lived, as the task ahead of the Villans and their new striker was realised, as form was hard to accumulate which saw the manager sacked in October.
Villa were relegated in the 2015/16 campaign, and Gestede’s expectation to fill the boots of Benteke was quickly identified to be impossible, as the Benin international scored just five goals in 32 appearances for the club.
In returning to the Championship, there was again hope that the striker could rediscover his form to fire Villa back to the top flight, considering that he had scored 20 goals in the second tier the season prior to his arrival in the Midlands.
Rudy Gestede's scoring record at Villa
Season
Apps
Goals
2015/16
36
6
2016/17
19
4
Via Transfermarkt
As Merson predicted, it wasn’t the case, as the £6m forward scored four goals in 18 appearances, before being offloaded to Middlesbrough in January 2017 after failing miserably to live up to expectation.
What was most remarkable about the sale was that Villa somehow received £6m from Boro for his services, essentially seeing them get a refund on the former hitman whose time at Villa Park was both short-lived and underwhelming.
Despite suffering relegation and losing Benteke, there was something to take from the transfer as it appeared it wasn’t only the Villans that struggled to get Gestede scoring, as he managed to net only eight goals in 71 appearances for Boro.
How much did Rudy Gestede cost Villa in total?
After receiving £32.5m for the services of Benteke, the £6m fee to capture Gestede seemed to be a minimal expense when revising the impact that was hoped he could have on the club.
At Villa, the 26-year-old was handed a five-year contract worth £7.5m, broken down into a salary of £1.5m-per-year which amounted to a weekly wage of £30k, via Capology.
The reading of Gestede’s contract becomes a far more painful read when working out just how much he cost the club during his mere 18-month stay, in which he collected around £2.25m in wages alone.
When adding his £6m transfer fee to the amount he earned in wages, Villa spent a total of £8.25m to accommodate the dud, who after scoring just ten goals, cost the Villans around £825k per goal.
It was never going to be an easy feat to replace the proficiency of Benteke, however Sherwood had a disaster in opting to sign Gestede as the replacement for the high-firing Belgian.
