The team will be sold to V Sports, the holding company that owns the club and is jointly owned by Wes Edens and Nassef Sawiris. Sawiris is Aston Villa’s chairman.
Here, we examine six initial reactions to the news…
This year, there were no serious considerations over selling a key first-team player. We were told that a potential sale of the women’s team had been planned for some time.
Douglas Luiz was sold to Juventus just before last summer’s PSR deadline (Photo: Getty)
There are caveats here. The sale itself is subject to Fair Market Value calculations (so a lower-level Premier League club couldn’t come up with their own vastly inflated figure without scrutiny), but it appears likely that Villa’s £60m sale will be rubber-stamped.
That said, can we avoid fanboying for our clubs when they do this? I have already seen Aston Villa supporters and writers heralding this as a genius move.
‘Chelsea started this – we’re just following their lead’
Yes and no. It is certainly true that Chelsea were the first Premier League club to sell their women’s team to a parent company (in their case BlueCo) and a slice of outside investorship. As such, the replies to Tuesday’s news were littered with the same themed reply: “Well, Chelsea did it.”
In 2019, it was confirmed that Villa sold their own stadium for £56.7m to NSWE Stadium Limited, owned by Villa’s joint-owners Sawiris and Edens.
That sale was completed on 21 May 2019 and was seen as controversial by Villa’s fellow Championship clubs, who believed that the West Midlanders were simply stretching the EFL’s financial regulations beyond their intended purpose. Just another loophole.
You can only lose so much, so those clubs with higher revenues (built up by historic success) can spend more and thus are likely to reinforce their position of dominance.
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But there is also a Pandora’s Box principle here. From the moment one club was permitted to complete one of these interrelated sales, every other club was more likely to do the same.
That said, there is a choice: clubs don’t have to do this.
Ultimately, you are making a choice between short-term gain that aims to jump into the elite (and elite revenue) and bank on sticking around, or a slower improvement that may well be more financially sustainable. The complication? Supporters are hardwired to demand more, and more quickly.
The subject didn’t even get to a vote, indication that there was no support for eradicating the possibility.
‘Women’s teams are being used as pawns’
The same is not true with women’s teams – there are employees to consider. I am uncomfortable with the messaging that a women’s team is in part existing so that it can be a useful tool in the men’s team increasing their own spending.
That message is pushed forward too. When Premier League clubs now invest in their own women’s teams (costs which sit outside PSR calculations), the inevitable question arises: are they doing this because they really believe in women’s sport, or just to increase the market value to enable a future sale?
Whether the same will be true in a year’s time is unclear – obviously they can sell players before then – but they are certainly able to proceed this season without fear of a points deduction.
Villa face being fined if they are found to have exceeded Uefa’s squad-cost ratio limits (Photo: Getty)
Uefa’s squad-cost ratio rules require player wages and transfer fees to only account for 80 per cent of revenue for 2023-24 and 70 per cent for 2024-25, when Villa were in European competition.
That said, to date, Uefa’s sanctions have been a) monetary and b) not of a level sufficient to be particularly foreboding. Villa have indeed overcome the hurdle that really mattered.
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I am confident that an independent regulator will exist in some form at some point.
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Read MoreBut that isn’t what we are discussing here. It is one thing having an independent regulator and another entirely for that regulator to impose limitations that may seem reasonable (i.e. not effectively selling parts of your club to a related party and the proceeds allowable under PSR).
The Premier League is its clubs – you will struggle to enforce anything deeply unpopular without significant blowback.
Which, at its worst, leaves the regulator as merely a conduit to the most powerful clubs, who will lean upon those in positions of governance to get what they want anyway.
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Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Aston Villa have hammered the final nail into PSR’s coffin )
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