Aston Villa have completed the signing of Alejandro Garnacho from Chelsea on an initial season-long loan with a conditional obligation to buy.The Athletic reported on Wednesday that a deal had been agreed between the two clubs, with the Argentina international having undergone a medical. A four-year contract is in place, should the conditional obligation-to-buy clause be met and the move made permanent.Villa’s successful pursuit of the Argentina international — who was the subject of interest from AS Roma — was driven by Villa manager Unai Emery, who wanted to sign the 22-year-old when he left Manchester United for Chelsea last summer.“We are delighted with Alejandro,” Emery said in a release on the Villa website. “He is so talented, young and he showed us his wish to help our project. We are really happy.”The deal is separate to Chelsea’s £117million ($156.4m) club record transfer of Morgan Rogers, which was confirmed on Tuesday. That fee surpassed Chelsea’s club record of £106m ($141.7m) paid Benfica for Enzo Fernandez in 2023.After a single season at Stamford Bridge in which he struggled to nail down a starting spot, Garnacho was allowed to stay away from Chelsea’s pre-season training this summer in order to secure a move away from the club. He started 22 matches, of which 14 were in the Premier League, and scored eight times.Villa’s attentions turned towards the recruitment of a wide player after they completed a club-record deal for Switzerland international Johan Manzambi — who is considered a direct replacement for Rogers — from Freiburg. Other options included Paris Saint-Germain’s Ibrahim Mbaye and Crysencio Summerville from West Ham United.The Atletico Madrid academy product left United last summer after five years, having scored 26 times in 144 appearances for the club. He fell out of favour with previous head coach Ruben Amorim, and admitted he did some “bad things” before his summer exit.Garnacho was included in Argentina’s preliminary World Cup squad, but did not make Lionel Scaloni’s final selection.How will UEFA look at this deal?Analysis by football finance writer Chris WeatherspoonAs detailed by The Athletic on Tuesday, signing players from Chelsea this window poses a quandary for Villa. Any permanent signing would be deemed a ‘player exchange transaction’ by UEFA, and Villa’s sizeable profit on Rogers would be reduced in UEFA calculations to the net difference in fees paid for Rogers and, in this instance, Garnacho.UEFA’s rule on deemed player exchanges covers a period of 45 days, and the Premier League transfer window has only 41 days left to run (as of Tuesday). Villa are in a settlement agreement with UEFA whereby they have little motivation to eat into that Rogers profit, so signing someone from Chelsea would do them no favours there.One workaround is exactly the Garnacho deal now posited: a loan move that can conditionally — and conditional is the key word — turn permanent.Rogers has completed his record move to Chelsea (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)If Garnacho’s move were to turn permanent more than 45 days after the Rogers deal completes, Villa would retain the full profit on the latter; Chelsea, too, would bank whatever profit they make on Garnacho without the need for adjustment. They are in their own UEFA settlement agreement and badly need to generate large profits from player trading in 2026-27.A conditional loan would therefore be beneficial for all parties, but UEFA is also wise to clubs finding loopholes. The governing body’s rulebook dictates that “if a condition is considered to be virtually certain”, the deal must be recognised as a permanent one at the point the loan begins. If, however, “the fulfilment of a condition cannot be assessed with sufficient certainty to trigger the permanent transfer from the inception of the loan”, then clubs can record a deal as a loan initially, then as a permanent transfer only once the relevant condition(s) is met.Any such conditions are unknown at this stage, but it’s plainly in both Villa and Chelsea’s interests for any permanent transfer to take place later. If Garnacho does move to the Midlands, UEFA will cast a keen eye over matters. But the rules retain scope for manoeuvre, if clubs are savvy enough.