Chuba Akpom is currently on loan at Ipswich Town, who have a mandatory option to buy if they are promoted to the Premier League this season. Ajax must increasingly hope that this will happen, because according to the latest data from SciSports in FootballTransfers otherwise it won’t look good for Ajax next summer.
So the first question is whether Ipswich Town will be promoted at all this season. With a third place and only two points off second place – direct promotion – and a three-point lead in seventh place – just outside the Premier League play-offs – anything is still possible for Ipswich Town. In that respect, Ajax still has to take both situations into account.
If Ipswich Town’s promotion becomes a reality, Akpom will remain in England and will also play for Ipswich Town in 2026/27. It is hoped that this will happen for Ajax, because its Estimated Transfer Value (ETV) has been steadily declining. At the start of his rental period this was still 8.3 million euros, but this has now dropped to 5.1 million euros.
Ajax must hope for Akpom’s transfer via purchase option
If Chuba Akpom manages to be promoted, Ajax would reportedly receive eight million euros for the British striker. If this mandatory purchase option is not activated, Akpom will apparently sell for a lot less next summer. The hope in Amsterdam is therefore increasingly that Ipswich Town will be promoted.
Akpom, who was bought from Middlesbrough in the summer of 2023 as a purchase from Sven Mislintat for 12.3 million euros from Middlesbrough – where he had scored 29 goals in 41 matches in 2022/23 – never really turned out to succeed at Ajax. In the second half of the 2025 season he was loaned to Lille, where he scored three times and provided an assist in sixteen matches. However, Lille did not take up the option to buy, so Akpom was loaned to Ipswich Town last summer. He has played twenty matches there so far this season, thirteen of which as a substitute. He is not yet very productive during his return to the Championship, with two goals.
He was productive at Ajax in the previous seasons, but his style of play was not one that suited Ajax and did not make much of an impression. In 2023/24 he scored fifteen goals and recorded three assists in 36 matches, mainly as a substitute. In the first half of the 2024/25 season, this was a total of eight goals and three assists in 32 matches. After this season, the marriage between Akpom and Ajax could be over for good.
