Aston Villa hit with €5m transfer bill after Champions League qualification

Aston Villa have reportedly made an additional payment to Villarreal as part of the deal to sign defender Pau Torres.

Torres signed for Villa last summer in a deal worth between £30 to £35m with various outlets reporting different fees. Spanish paper El Periodico Mediterraneo are saying that Villarreal are due €5m from Villa for Torres.

The deal is said to be structured in to two sections with one of the clauses being how many games he played in his debut campaign. He played a total of 3,210 minutes which is 39 games across four competitions and so he exceeded that amount.

Another caveat in the deal was qualifying for the Champions League and of course Villa did that by finishing fourth in the Premier League, ahead of Tottenham Hotspur. They did that in the final week of the season with Spurs losing to Manchester City which allowed Villa to play against Crystal Palace with freedom though they did lose 5-0 at Selhurst Park.

Out of the 39 games that Torres played in, he started 36 of them and was a prominent figure in the Villa backline. A centre-back partnership of Ezri Konsa and Tyrone Mings began the season but towards the end of the campaign it was Torres and Diego Carlos partnered together with Konsa pushed out to the right hand side.

Villa could be in the market to complement Torres in the summer as they are not signing Clement Lenglet. He was on loan from Barcelona after spending last season at Spurs, and the Midlands club will not be making his deal permanent.

Mings missed most of the season but is in to the final stages of his recovery from his knee injury that had him sidelined for nine months. The 31-year-old will now have the task of impressing Unai Emery in pre-season.