Aston Villa are enjoying brighter times under Unai Emery, with the Spaniard directing the club back to the glory days after some questionable form under Steven Gerrard.
The former Arsenal boss has reconnected the squad and implemented his own style of play to great effect, as his players continue to elevate their performance for the benefit of the club.
While the signings that the four-time Europa League winner has made so far at Villa have been impressive, the Villans haven’t always had a high success rate from new arrivals, as Dean Smith will know from one of his captures.
In the summer of 2021, Smith struck a deal with Southampton to sign striker Danny Ings on a three-year contract in a bid to bolster his front line.
How much did Danny Ings cost Villa overall?
Villa paid £25m to the Saints to take the sharp-shooter off their hands, with Smith describing him as an “outstanding” acquisition who has “scored goals wherever he has played”.
It was a fair evaluation by Smith, as Ings sits today on a domestic goal tally of 123 scored in 380 appearances for a variety of clubs, however only 14 of them came at Villa.
The Englishman was handed a salary of £6.24m-per-year by the Midlands club, making him their second-highest earner at the time – falling just short of Philippe Coutinho with a wage of £120k-per-week.
Considering that Ings arrived on the back of a glorious stint at St Mary’s where he had netted 46 goals in 100 appearances, his price and wage seemed verifiable with reference to the impact he was anticipated to make on the team.
Things didn’t quite go to plan for the Winchester-born whiz, as he bid farewell to Villa Park after just a year and a half, where in that time he’d cost the club a total of around £34m in both wages and transfer fees.
Was he worth that much?
When you divide the overall expenditure Villa paid to both purchase Ings and maintain his wage demands by the number of goals he scored, it works out that the 31-year-old cost the club around £2.4m per goal.
There was no denying the presence in leading the line that the former Liverpool forward would implement to the XI, however what he actually delivered at Villa Park was far from the standard expected.
After scoring 22 Premier League goals in 2019/20 and 12 in 2020/21, it was a disappointment to see Ings score only seven in his debut campaign in the top flight with Villa.
Luckily for the Villans, they had, and still have, a talisman to compare and contrast the poor form of Ings to in Ollie Watkins, who outscored the £25m man during both seasons he was at the club.
Upon reflection of his career in Birmingham, the England international with three caps dubbed his first campaign at Villa Park as “underwhelming”, which after seven goals in 30 appearances, is a fair call of judgement.
In January 2023, the striker moved on to the London Stadium to call it quits on his time with the Villans, signing for West Ham United as part of a £15m deal.
Since signing for the Hammers, the former Saints talisman has found the net on just two occasions in the Premier League, signalling that despite losing millions to sign him, Villa cashed in on his services at the right moment.
From millions in wages to a struggle for goals, Villa are fortunate enough to have been handed a life raft in the form of Watkins – who has struck four times in eight league games this season – to save them from the humiliation of Ings’ woeful spell, with their goals restored through Emery’s star man.
