That Aston Villa are ambitious is in no doubt, with the playing squad and club transformed by the influx of new millions over the past few years; they are currently above Manchester City in the five-year net spend table.
As with Newcastle United before them, that has paid off, with a top-four finish last season earning Aston Villa the ability to go and spend even more money next season thanks to the healthy boost to their coffers Champions League football will provide. But as with Newcastle before them, staying there is going to be incredibly difficult.
Villa took a gamble on their PSR position in 2022/23, posting a £116m loss that season – propped up by a slight profit the year before – where only losses of £105m over a three-year period are permitted, which still necessitated their horse trading and playing the amortisation game ahead of the unofficial June 30 ‘transfer deadline’ that marked the end of the 2023/24 financial year (for which their results are not expected until next year). Nobody in Europe has spent more money this summer.
Despite that – and despite what the league table showed last season – Villa co-owner Nassef Sawiris has complained about the club being hamstrung in their ability to close the gap on the traditional Big Six. Talking about finances is boring, but necessary in this case, because Sawiris’ comments tell us two things: that Villa want to become genuine title contenders, and that they have concerns about their ability to remain in that top-four picture over the longer term.
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Villa’s revenues in 2022/23 were £205m. Next season’s revamped Swiss format will see Villa rake in at least an extra £16m even if they were to lose all their games and played in entirely empty stadiums. Reaching the last 16 would more than double that after the progression and win bonuses are taken into account.
That’s a significant revenue bump, but even if we assume they surpass £250m in revenue, that number would be dwarfed by the three clubs who finished above them in the league last season: Manchester City’s turnover for the same period was £712m, Liverpool’s £594m, and Arsenal’s £428m. Even Newcastle came in at £250m before they played in last season’s Champions League.
We will acknowledge quickly that obviously, if you zoom back out from the top eight, some perspective hits back home. If you’re Sheffield United, Everton or Luton, painting Villa as a poor suppressed underdog is ludicrous in light of their extravagant spending. And if you’re Cardiff, Sheffield Wednesday or even Sunderland, you’d have the same complaints in turn about the Blades, the Toffees and the Hatters…and so on and so on. If you’ve no sympathy for the likes of Villa, that’s fully understandable.
But let’s leave aside the ethical and competitive considerations just for five minutes to consider the position Villa are in: from Sawiris’ perspective, he has a point…and that’s without even mentioning the potential for any one of the under-performing members of the Big Six to overtake them by swinging their wallets around. That’s Manchester United (£601m), Tottenham (£550m), and Chelsea (£475m).
That gives Villa far less room in their wage budget – still the best predictor of future success – and, crucially for the season ahead, far less room to make expensive mistakes. From both a financial and a sporting perspective, the established big boys are far better-placed to absorb a flop or two, particularly if they are able to sell them on for a hefty fee.
As Newcastle found out last season, though, the Premier League’s nouveaux riches have to make their recruitment count a lot more.
If, say, your star signing gets hit with a gambling ban a couple of months after arriving at the club, a far more significant chunk of your recruitment work has gone to waste, at exactly the moment you need them most to cope with the increased demands of higher-level continental football – though unlike Newcastle, Villa do at least have experience of balancing their league experience with European demands, which may allow them to succeed where Eddie Howe’s side failed.
There is, whether we like it or not, a class system at play here, with Villa part of the upwardly aspirational upper middle-class who now face the impossible leap into aristocracy.
Well…not quite impossible, but it’s less a leap than a gradual rise. Tottenham’s ascent to a largely self-sustaining machine that brings in more money than Arsenal and Chelsea has taken years, but was built on smart recruitment and well-timed sales.
It took them some time to realise that Steven Gerrard and Phillippe Coutinho were not smart bets, and they have since eschewed their temptation towards flashy names and leaned more into the less glamorous but more effective business that has actually worked well for them.
Ross Barkley aside, their recruitment this summer is entirely made up of players aged between 20 and 23, who they hope will not just perform for them in the immediate term, but offer enough resale value that if they do well, they can continually refresh the squad until they reach a point that they don’t have to sell anymore, just as Spurs were able to resist the urge to let Harry Kane go for years before finally caving last summer.
If FFP stays in anything like its current guise, that is the model Villa need to follow; still, it makes it hard to say what a realistic ambition is for them in the immediate future. If they are to remain in the Champions League in the face of their relative disadvantage, they are going to have to continue to be smarter than their rivals.
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