An outrageous Premier League XI that cost less than £117m Morgan Rogers | OneFootball

Chelsea are breaking their transfer record on the signing of Morgan Rogers from Aston Villa for an eye-watering £117m.

No strangers to a big spend, the Blues have agreed a blockbuster deal for Rogers. He’s a talented player, for sure, but the price they’ll be paying is sure to raise some eyebrows.

True, it’s a summer in which Elliot Anderson has cost Manchester City £116m and Sandro Tonali has cost Tottenham £92.5m. But there is still value to be found at the cheaper end of the scale.

To emphasise the point, we’ve assembled an XI of Premier League stars signed for less than £117m put together.

GK: Emiliano Martinez – £17m

One of the best goalkeepers in the world, Martinez got his break with Aston Villa after they bought him from Arsenal in 2020.

Since then, Martinez has become a Premier League regular and established himself as Argentina’s number one.

A fee of £17m might have been seen as a calculated risk for Villa at the time, but it’s undoubtedly one that paid off and looks a bargain now.

RB: Daniel Munoz – £6.9m

Munoz had been playing in Belgium when Crystal Palace signed him two-and-a-half years ago for less than £7m.

The Colombia international has been tremendous value for money, winning the FA Cup in his first full season with Palace and the Conference League in his second.

Transfer rumours about Munoz these days tend to mention clubs of the calibre of Barcelona and Real Madrid.

CB: Ezri Konsa – £12m

Aston Villa dipped into the Championship market to pick up Konsa from Brentford in 2019 and it proved to be a smart move.

Costing just £12m, Konsa has now completed seven seasons with Villa, making more than 200 Premier League appearances and winning the Europa League earlier this year, before representing England at the World Cup.

Aged 28, Konsa still has a fair few years left at the top level.

CB: James Hill – £1.6m

The 2025-26 season was a breakthrough spell for Hill at Bournemouth as he played 29 times in the Premier League.

They originally signed the defender from Fleetwood Town in League One. It took him a few years and a couple of loan spells to force his way into their plans, but that’s something he succeeded in last season.

LB: Adrien Truffert – £14.4m

Bournemouth were tasked with finding a replacement for Liverpool-bound Milos Kerkez at left-back last summer and they got it right with Truffert.

Truffert cost around a third of the fee they received for Kerkez and arguably had a better season.

In fact, the former Rennes man only missed 40 minutes of the whole Premier League campaign for the Cherries, who achieved European qualification by the end of it.

CM: John McGinn – £2.8m

Signed by Villa when they were in the Championship and he’d been playing in Scotland for Hibernian, McGinn has become a modern-day hero at Villa Park.

After helping Villa to promotion at the first time of asking, McGinn has been playing in the top flight for seven years. He’s been Villa’s captain for half of his time there.

With more than 300 appearances for the club to his name, the Glaswegian midfielder reached a climax for his Villa career by lifting the Europa League trophy this year.

Incidentally, McGinn cost around 85% less than the Conference League winning captain (Palace’s Dean Henderson) in the same season.

CM: Granit Xhaka – £17.3m

Xhaka is the most expensive player in this XI, but the overwhelming consensus is that he was a bargain for Sunderland after their return to the Premier League last summer.

It was quite a coup considering he was a Bundesliga winner in 2023-24 with Bayer Leverkusen and had previously captained Arsenal.

Chelsea themselves thought they could snatch Xhaka in their own bargain move this summer to reunite him with Xabi Alonso, but the Black Cats have been having none of it.

RW: Iliman Ndiaye – £16.9m

Everton brought Ndiaye back to English football in 2024 after the former Sheffield United forward’s single season with Marseille. Inspired move.

After mainly playing on the left wing in his first season, Ndiaye began transitioning to the right in his second.

Across those two seasons, the Senegal international has scored 17 goals. In other words, that’s more goals than the millions spent on his transfer and the ratio can only get better from here.

AM: Eli Junior Kroupi – £12m

Kroupi was one of the Premier League’s biggest breakout stars last season after Bournemouth welcomed him in from Lorient.

It helped that they have the same owners, but the £12m transfer value is one the Cherries could turn a massive profit on in years to come.

They’ll be hoping to keep the exciting 20-year-old to themselves a while longer, but if he can back up his 13-goal debut season in English football, they might start finding that difficult.

LW: Gabriel Martinelli – £6m

It feels as if the era of vintage Martinelli at Arsenal might be over, but that doesn’t change what a bargain find the Brazilian was.

Costing just £6m back in 2019, Martinelli has since scored 62 goals for the Gunners. In other words, his cost per goal has been less than £100,000.

Martinelli finally became a Premier League champion earlier this year, even though he only scored once in the league along the way.

Still, Arsenal are having to pay more than five times what they spent on Martinelli to bring in his potential upgrade this summer, £34m man Christos Tzolis.

The value for money Martinelli has provided Arsenal on the whole is not to be sniffed at.

CF: Jean-Philippe Mateta – £9m

Considering his time on loan at Crystal Palace wasn’t spectacular, Mateta has come to represent impressive value over the past few years.

Over the past three seasons, Mateta has hit double figures of goals each time. He now has 50 Premier League goals to his name in total.

Few positions have as inflated a market as centre-forward, which makes Mateta all the more of a bargain.