Villa place £130m price tag on Rogers
Arsenal would need to pay British-record fee for forward Tuchel warns England about penalty shoot-out threat
Arsenal target Morgan Rogers is valued at a British-record £130m by Aston Villa.
Rogers is at the World Cup with England, but is being chased by Arsenal and is attracting interest from Chelsea.
Villa do not want to sell Rogers and believe he is worth more than his England team-mate Elliot Anderson, who agreed a move to Manchester City for £116m.
It is understood that Villa believe, in the current market, Rogers is worth £130m, which is £5m more than the British-record £125m price Liverpool paid Newcastle United for Alexander Isak last summer.
Villa’s valuation also factors in the fact that Middlesbrough hold a 20 per cent sell-on clause on Rogers, who they sold in a deal worth £15m in the 2024 winter transfer window.
It remains to be seen whether Arsenal or Chelsea would meet the £130m valuation, or whether Villa could be negotiated down.
Rogers made his first World Cup start for England in the Group L victory against Panama and has won 18 caps for his country – six more than Anderson.
Unlike Anderson, Rogers has also played in the Champions League for Villa and won a European trophy. On the way to Europa League success, the 23-year-old scored 14 goals in all competitions in the season just gone.
Telegraph Sport reported that Premier League clubs feared that Anderson’s move would inflate the English market and some sources believe that has already started.
Rogers is preparing for England’s first knockouts-stage game of the World Cup, against the Democratic Republic of Congo tomorrow.
And Thomas Tuchel, the head coach, has been charting the penalties of his England players as they prepare for the possibility of shootouts.
England face DR Congo in a last32 tie in Atlanta, with the threat of penalty shoot-outs hanging over teams that cannot be separated after extra time.
Tuchel is believed to have privately warned his players that they might have to get through two penalty shoot-outs to win the World Cup after studying previous tournaments and the opposition.
England have been practising penalties and conducted a mock shoot-out after the behind-closeddoors friendly victory over Miami FC.
Tuchel is understood to have been charting the success rate of his penalty takers and has been keeping a record of how they have fared.
England have a number of penalty takers in their squad. Aside from first-choice taker Harry Kane, Tuchel can pick from Anthony Gordon, Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka, Ivan Toney, Jude Bellingham,
Eberechi Eze and goalkeeper Jordan Pickford for a shoot-out.
Pickford and Toney, along with Eze, who missed a penalty for Arsenal in the Champions League final shoot-out defeat by Paris Stgermain, have all confirmed they would take a spot kick for England at the World Cup.
Reece James, the Chelsea captain, is another England player who could take a penalty, although the right-back has been nursing a hamstring problem.
James missed the final Group L game against Panama and is a major doubt for the tie against DR Congo. But James is optimistic that he can still play for England at the World Cup and a return in time for an appearance in the last 16 has not been ruled out.
Tuchel left some accomplished penalty takers in England after not selecting Cole Palmer and Morgan Gibbs-white in his 26-man World Cup squad. Harry Maguire, who was also excluded, has been successful from the spot in the past for England.