Arsenal’s pursuit of Morgan Rogers appears to have come to an abrupt end after trusted journalist David Ornstein revealed Chelsea have reached a verbal agreement with Aston Villa to sign the England international.
The Gunners have been heavily linked with Rogers throughout the summer transfer window, with reports suggesting Mikel Arteta viewed the versatile attacker as one of his priority attacking targets.
However, according to Ornstein, Chelsea have now won the race.
The Athletic correspondent reports that Chelsea have agreed a deal worth £117 million, with Aston Villa accepting the offer. Rogers is expected to sign a six-year contract, with the option of a further year, while a medical has reportedly been scheduled for Monday.
Ornstein also states that Arsenal were interested in the 23-year-old, but that Rogers’ preference was to join Chelsea, with Blues boss Xabi Alonso said to have played an instrumental role in convincing the England international.
🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Chelsea reach verbal agreement with Aston Villa to sign Morgan Rogers. Bid of £117m accepted by #AVFC & being finalised. 6+1y contract, medical Monday. #AFC interested but 23yo attacker wanted #CFC; Xabi Alonso instrumental @TheAthleticFC https://t.co/81YbZw7ELc
— David Ornstein (@David_Ornstein) July 18, 2026
Arsenal had made Rogers a leading summer target
The update comes as a major blow after Arsenal’s interest in Rogers intensified in recent days.
Just Arsenal recently reported that the Gunners were preparing to make an opening bid worth around £105 million after identifying the Aston Villa star as one of their leading attacking targets this summer.
It was also claimed that Rogers was prepared to reject interest from Tottenham Hotspur in favour of a move to the Emirates if an agreement could be reached.
Instead, if Ornstein’s report proves accurate, Chelsea have moved decisively to secure one of England’s brightest attacking talents before Arsenal were able to submit a formal offer.
At £117 million, the transfer would also become a record fee for an English player.
Attention may now turn elsewhere
Should the deal be completed, Arsenal’s recruitment team will almost certainly be forced to focus on alternative attacking options.
The Gunners have already agreed a deal to sign Christos Tzolis from Club Brugge, while links with Atlético Madrid forward Julián Álvarez have continued throughout the transfer window.
Missing out on Rogers would undoubtedly be disappointing given the length of Arsenal’s reported interest, but the summer window still has plenty of time remaining and Andrea Berta has already shown a willingness to move quickly when priority targets become unavailable.
If Chelsea do complete the signing, it will represent one of the biggest transfer stories of the summer and bring an end to one of Arsenal’s most closely followed pursuits.
What do you make of the latest update? Are you disappointed Arsenal appear set to miss out on Morgan Rogers, or do you think the Gunners should now focus on other attacking targets? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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I’ve just had a thought, having missed out on Rogers. Maybe Chelsea will sell one of their rejects to Arsenal, their good at doing that😂.
And we’re good at falling for it.🤣
Maybe Corporate Man is more on the money? See below
Good evening SueP,
I agree Corporate Man makes some valid points.👍
How was CM points valid , Derek ?
I’m curious , probably the best English prospect in years going to a rival .
Dan Kit,
For me Rogers is a good player, but a £117M one, I don’t think so.
I think if you’re spending that kind of money, buy two players. Better value as far as I’m concerned.
What like Madeuke and Eze ?
Dan Kit,
Point taken😂, but on the whole I still think it better to spend that kind of money on more than one player.
I know they spent over £100M, for Rice. But their are exceptions, but Rogers certainly doesn’t fit into that bracket.
Beg to differ ,he’s quality,puts to bed the silly comments about “when Arteta comes calling players don’t go anywhere else .
Well Dan Kit,
This forum is all about opinions. 👍
Madueke and Eze the Crown Jewels of the Berta reign 😕
Champions mate
speaks for itself
No thanks to those two. Champions built on our defence which was built by Edu not Berta
squad game mate
the squad we built last summer was good enough to be the best in the country
Edu never did
Leon,
You strike me as a big Edu fan, and you stick the boot into Berta at every opportunity.
A bit like me to Odegaard to be fair. 🤣
Don’t care not worth that much .
Kroupi and Scott is what we need .
Kroupi/Tzolis lw
Rice/Scott
Zubi/Skelly
Odegard/Eze
Merino
Superb midfield all covered
Bid £150 mill for the pair of them
Tbh, I’m not overly disappointed with this development.
In a comment on another article, I had argued that except Odegaard was leaving Arsenal, the pursuit of Rogers didn’t make much sense to me, especially with Tzolis on his way to the Emirates.
And there’s no way Arsenal would be spending 117m quid on Rogers, no way. That money is better invested elsewhere please
Another Mudryk loading.
Agreed, it was never totally clear to me what the plan with Rogers was anyway. He’s like an AM/inside forward, when clearly our top need is an elite left winger. He’s a great player obviously, I would have been happy to have him in the mix as he’d add another dimension / more options. Can sub on the wings. So more of a general utility forward, at a high level, like an upgrade on Eze maybe. But for £117m (more actually, given we’d need to overpay) do we desperately need another generalist?
I don’t think Arteta would reveal his plans for Rogers to the likes of us.
It was his number one transfer target this summer by all accounts and we blew it to a mid table team not even good enough to qualift for the Europa Conference League.
It could be that he was planning a new tactical approach and Rogers would have been crucial to that I don’t know.
The fact is we lost out yet again.
To me all this talk of not being bothered about this is just missing the point – Arteta viewed him as being key to his plans…
You get it
or we were not willing to pay that amount
don’t believe everything you read
Yeah exactly, if the narrative in the media was indeed true about Rogers being an outright No 1 target, then it could suggest EITHER a permanent tactical shift, or simply stocking up on options. Eze for example was bought to provide options in the final third. But we don’t really know, maybe he just admires Rogers a lot, and put him at the top of his “nice to have” list, along with a few others. There aren’t obviously any absolute “must gets” to plug gaping holes (left wing and right back closest to it I guess). I’m sure Arteta has plenty of ideas and will work with whatever the club can bring him.
Aston Villa will avoid selling anyone to Arsenal. It’s all because Emery got sacked for being rubbish back in 2019 and he can’t get over it.
GH,
Emery doesn’t decide who the player goes to. If Arsenal had a bid excepted, it would have been the owners who decided, not Emery.
Exactly. Club level decisions. Berta would have been informed of the Chelsea bid and clearly decided not to get into a bidding war. To top Chelsea he would have to go to 120m. Crazy money for Rogers.
As long as we dont go and buy anyone from Chelsea i dont care. The asking price was ridiculous and these four are all we need. Kroupi, Scott, Alvarez, Bouaddi.
Let us go and look for our Kroupi and Scot. We have the foundation already and all we need are good prospects that we won’t have to break the bank for. It is stupid to pay 70,80 or 90 million for players that were bought for peanuts because they have one outstanding season.
The pressure of not winning trophies had been lifted and now we need to be smart
Spot on comment.
I agree it’s spot on comment too. A lot of players have good seasons elsewhere because they are not facing low block every minute of every game – like THAT goal against City, no opponent in same post code. Whichever big Prem club signs Kroupi it may not work because of that, also his position, not a left winger or 9, it’s 10 or nothing with him.
Scott is a big straight no because he’s a spud.
You just said you don’t want over priced EPL players. Who do you think Kroupi and Scott play for and do you think they will be cheap?
The rumoured fee for Kroupi is £80 million that Spurs have been banding about.
You either spend the money or you don’t. It is clear at this point that Arsenal won’t so the top class players that Arsenal need to strengthen are beyond us.
It’s just the financial landscape Arsenal are now forced to operate in…
This a great news for me as an Arsenal fan. I don’t want an overpriced English/epl players. I don’t want Guimaraes as well. We bought four players from premiership last season and non gave us value for money.
Who do you want then ?
I’m concerned because aside from signing a third choice goalkeeper and a defender who has already been here a year we have done nothing. In fact, we are weaker because we have lost a very reliable player in Trossard.
We have just under five weeks to the start of the season and we are nowhere.
Every team has strengthened except for Arsenal and it is likely we are going to be short of players with Saliba out for an extended period and Rice and Saka exhausted.
At this stage can we afford to be that dismissive and say we are happy that Rogers is going to Chelsea and we don’t want this player or that player?
I don’t think we can. In a few weeks it will be panic mode once again.
I really don’t see the improvement Berta has brought to Arsenal. Edu did much more…
Wow!!! Just Wow!!!! What a loser. He was our target and he has chose Chelsea. Did we not offer a good package? I am gobsmacked, especially from what I know about why were looking to Rogers. This window so far is passing us by.
I hope we do not buy another Chelsea reject for inflated money and help them out financially!!!!!
Berta is most certainly not what he is cracked up to be is he?
I thought being champions would spur the signing of top players but it has had the opposite effect.
Very disappointing.
A long month ahead…
We won the league under Berthas reign, thats nothing to be sniffed at. Window not over, so we can only speculate and moan at single events. Lets wait a see, before we have a full blown rant until the window is shut. I am VERY interested now to see who we get instead of Rogers.
He signed Christ.
Not Jesus, the other one.
What’s similar with Gyokeres and Christos is amazing stats out there in the farmer leagues – are we saying 50 goal involvements in 50 games is all that catches Berta’s eye? That’s his method? I’m concerned T-Zo utterly flopped in English football matters more than stats in farmers leagues.
When Berta fought Simeoney on the pitch during the semi, what was he even doing pitch side anyway?
Hold your thoughts it’s too early…Alvarez loading…
We have seen a lot of Alverez the last few months. I think it’s similar problem with him as with Kroupi – what exactly is the position to get the most from the talent? With Alvarez it’s not normal 9, nor wide. I don’t even think it’s false 9 for him to show his best, it’s just afforded straightforward floating free role.
Sides who give Alvarez freedom to float likely get the best from him. But the top sides and their systems can’t really afford that in prem football? Salah wasn’t even allowed that.
He was anonymous against England – their most advanced player actually hiding from contact with defenders rather than challenging making things happen.
I don’t have Álvarez working out well enough here to justify that price tag.
Yeah I tend to agree on Alvarez. Which is why I keep harping about Barcola, Yildiz or a similar elite winger for the left. Tzolis is talented and all, but we are yet to see him do it in a top league so we just don’t know enough about him yet. We shall see.
It may have come as shock to media, but Arsenal have been in negotiations with Morgan all week to try and agree personal terms, the fact we couldn’t suggests Morgan chose Chelsea both because his best mates there and we wouldn’t match Chelsea’s personal terms. So even if we matched Chelsea’s bid, Rodgers wasn’t likely to choose us.
I’m not too upset, this brings us closer to signing Ken, who is the only player I want to see us sign now this window.
Just go and get Kenan and sort our left wing for the next 12 years for goodness sake.
Who is Ken?
Barbies mate😂
Ken Barlow 😕
Watch it Reggie
Reggie,
I’m slow today, it took a while for that joke to drop.😂👍
Probably this is one of the biggest smokescreen Berta has ever engineered thus far.
😂😂
Probably it isn’t..
So the real target is….
Moon Girl,
Breaking news, their new target is Buck Rogers😂. One for the older poster’s on here.
Something Rogers that rhymes with Buck.
And you don’t even need to be an old poster to understand that one.
Moon Girl,
😂🤣😂🤣👍
Roy Rogers, for the even older ones on here😂
When the smoke clears, he’ll be wearing Blue.
noooo!! Rodgers is a quality player.
Just seen the England line-up. Rice, Saka, and Eze are in the side.
If I were Arteta, I’d be fuming with Rice and Saka. And I wouldn’t be shy on telling them when they return for pre-season training either.
I understand them wanting to win the World Cup, but a meaningless Bronze game come on now.
Do you tell your manager that you are refusing to play?
SueP,
Sadly they can’t say no. But if Tuchel had half a brain he knows that both Rice and Saka have fitness issues.
And this doesn’t just affect Arsenal, it could affect England to, should they pick up injury’s.
There really is no need to play them in this game. Do you agree, or am I wide of the mark on this one in you’re view?.
Derek, without those two, we’d probably have lost against France.
You’re right, though. They should never have been risked.
Jax,
It was good to see them scoring and playing well I must admit. But I still hope that we don’t suffer in the long term.
I would have been happy if we signed Rogers, but not at that price. Crazy market at the moment. Plan B?
Plan B?
Oh My God! They Signed Kenny!
Please.
Moon Girl,
Stop it, my sides are hurting. 🤣😂🤣😂👍
Not sure it is right but we are still supposed to be interested in Alvarez for 130 mil. Noooooooooo, that can not be right, he is not worth anywhere near that. Bertha signed him for AM. Please no, not at a hugely over inflated price.
Agreed. I wanted him before he went to AM, but then the price would have been reasonable at that time. Bertha supposedly always has two players marked, but if Alvarez is plan B we need a plan C.
It’s really just a blow because Mikel wanted him really badly and Mikel has earned my trust regarding recruitment. The price was always silly and 117mill is quite obviously an absurd overpay. Hope we can bring Kroupi in now who personally I think has obvious world class potential
Exactly Kroupi has a special ceiling
Deadly finisher !
Unfortunately spurs seem to be in the prime seat to land Kroupi.
Turn to Morgan Gibbs-White
Not a bad call, but his price will be over inflated.
£117 is massively over inflated for Rogers.
Considering we got Declan rice for less. Saka is worth 220£ of Rogers is 117.
I’m not upset we didnt get him, he’s not going to be the clinical finisher we missed last season.