In theory Aston Villa supporters should have been rubbing their hands together at the prospect of a Champions League season. Equally, Tottenham fans could have been despondent after a relegation battle that went to the wire. A 17th-place finish meant Spurs earned about £35m less in Premier League merit payments, which are based on final league position, than Villa.
Yet the mood in the two camps is reversed. Spurs have spent an estimated £322m in the transfer window, and that excludes the loan of Manchester City’s Omar Marmoush, for whom they are committed to paying £55m after this season. Sales have reduced the outlay to a net £140m, but Spurs fans seemed buoyant, at least until the first match, when they were soundly thrashed by one of the data scientists’ teacher’s pets, Brentford.
Villa, on the other hand, have had a dispiriting summer in the transfer market. Morgan Rogers, Ezri Konsa, Youri Tielemans are the headline departures, Chelsea have agreed a £7.5m deal for Emiliano Martínez and a seemingly want-away Ollie Watkins may follow, probably offsetting money expected to be spent before Tuesday’s deadline, including on Nicolas Jackson and a centre-half. Over the course of the past five seasons Villa’s net spend on transfers is £3m, the second lowest in the Premier League.
Only the other the data scientists’ teacher’s pets, Brighton, who beat Villa 4-0 last weekend, have had a lower net spend during that period. Villa have finished ahead of Spurs for the past four seasons – narrowly in the first two, then by 11 and 13 places. They are coming off a memorable campaign, having won the Europa League, as Spurs did a year earlier, and secured a top-four berth.
But as the former Villa player and lifetime fan Gabby Agbonlahor says: “How can an Aston Villa fans ever dream, in my lifetime, of fighting to lift the Premier League?” Villa’s owners are Nassef Sawiris, who according to Forbes is Egypt’s richest man, and Wes Edens, the owner of the Milwaukee Bucks and also a multibillionaire. The two bought Villa in 2018 when the club was in crisis under the ownership of Tony Xia. But unlike Chelsea under Roman Abramovich and Manchester City under Sheikh Mansour in the years before cost control rules, they have been limited in their ability to spend as much money as they wish on the club.
The reason behind the spending restrictions has been the cost control environment that operates under Uefa and the Premier League. Introduced nominally to reduce debt in European football, the initially named financial fair play (FFP) had nothing to do with fairness. The FFP rules were then, in a Windscale-to-Sellafield-style ceremony, renamed profitability and sustainability rules (PSR), and had little to do with profitability or sustainability.
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