Aaron Mooy has quickly become the talk of the town after his performances in the last month for Huddersfield Town and Australia, but how much could he be worth for Manchester City should this run of form continue?
A good place to start is a rough estimate of how much the Terriers midfielder would be worth now.
The site transfermarkt suggests the midfielder would be worth around £630,000 if sold today. This valuation could easily be seen as a base value for Mooy, with transfermarkt not adjusting Mooy’s valuation at all since 2013, a time when he was still playing for Western Sydney Wanderers.
But if we take this valuation and compare it to the average of all players in the English Championship – around £1.23 million – then it quickly becomes obvious that Mooy would be rather undervalued based purely off this valuation. Should the midfielder continue to perform even averagely for Huddersfield over the course of this season, then it is perfectly reasonable to assume Mooy could go for anywhere between £1.2 and £2 million come next June.
However, Mooy’s on-field performances could completely alter his total valuation.
With the Australian being nominated for Championship player of the month in August, there is a sense that if Mooy continues to be one of the league’s best players, his value could drastically increase over the course of the season.
A good comparison is that of Fulham midfielder Tom Cairney, who is only four months younger than Mooy and valued at approximately £5 million.
If Mooy continues his form and proves to be one of the players of the Championship come May 2017, then one could suggest his value would inflate to around that same level, despite the disadvantage of being a foreign player, which would hurt his value compared to English players such as Cairney.
Another interesting factor in any potential valuation of Mooy is that of the current transfer market. Football agent Phil Smith suggests that the market is heavily influenced on the idea of supply and demand and clubs desperately looking for a central-midfielder will pay significantly more in order to secure a more talented player in Mooy compared to what they would pay for a defender.
A key example is the recent transfer of former Newcastle player Moussa Sissoko, who moved to Tottenham on deadline day.
Before the transfer, Sissoko had a suggested market value of just £10.9 million, a far cry for the eventual £29.5 million he went for. While that transfer did have the caveat of being on deadline day – a day where clubs are more prone to throwing money around to confirm late signings – the trend is a common one across players moving into the Premier League.
Midfielders such as Ryan Mason, Pierre-Emile Höjbjerg and even established players like Granit Xhaka and Paul Pogba moved to Premier League sides for heavily inflated prices, with Mason and Höjbjerg being transferred for double their suggested market value.
Should Mooy be a target for a Premier League side in the next transfer window or two, then his value could be heavily raised by clubs looking to splash the cash in order to bring in a player, with the potential of even more should a move eventuate on deadline day.
There are simply too many variables to pin down an accurate valuation of Mooy: whether he remains fit and playing at the same level he has been playing at so far for Huddersfield, whether there are clubs looking to pick up a central midfielder of Mooy’s quality, whether Mooy takes a move to the Premier League or moves overseas or even the larger factor of the world’s economy.
But if one was to put a purely theoretical and optimistic valuation on the Australian player, then it could be within reason to suggest a rough valuation of around £10-15 million come the end of the season.
Mooy could prove to be a fantastic buy for any Premier League side if he continues his fantastic form, and his valuation could go almost anywhere from here.
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