AnAstonVillafan

The "where we should be" is my personal view. No club has a divine right to be in the PL. True. However when a club like Aston Villa gets relegated they arent easliy going to give up and fall apart. Some do, but others use every asset, advantage they can to get back to the top. I read most of the posts in this thread as an outsider who wishes Bristol City well, and you do spend a lot of time complaining about FFP and parachute payments. But I see Huddersfield, Brentford, Luton, Brighton, Forest and Leeds all get promoted without parachute payments. While QPR, Watford, Huddersfield, Stoke, Middlesborough, Cardiff, Hull, Norwich and West Brom receive them but not come storming back, in fact a couple of those clubs are in serious trouble financially. The loophole is/was poor. I dont agree with it. Without my guess is we'd be in dire straits. What saved Aston Villa really however was the change of ownership. Without that we'd have been in adminstration. If Spurs had simply offered fair market value for Jack Grealish, they'd have got him for a quarter of what City would eventually pay for him and we'd still be in the EFL, with owners draining money out of the club like what's happening at West Brom. The HS2 money was spent on a training facility. Not new players. Some people havent received compensation, some have. There are uni buildings and office blocks being flattened right now in Birmingham to make way for HS2. Some of them less than 20 years old. Conor Hourihane had every right to be pissed with those chancers at Leeds. If he got a three game ban, what difference does this make to the grand objective ?

You must get of your head the idea that we badly broke the rules. We didn't. We did use a questionable (dodgy) loophole. But nothing more than that. The situation we are in today has nothing to do with that. We have differerent owners to when we overspent in (my opinion) in 2017. We deserved promotion. And the club is being rebuilt. Personally I think its just being returned to where we should have been and maybe three seasons in the EFL were needed to clear out the deadwood, hangers on, poor owners and management. As for the Hawkeye business, yes we got lucky with that. But in the very same season we had a legitimate goal outrageously disallowed vs Palace. An incorrect VAR decision when leading Arsenal in the last ten minutes, and a fraudulent penalty given to Man Utd at home when Fernandes fouled our player. No one ever talks about that. Just the Hawkeye decision. So, in my mind it evens out. A season is played over 38 games. Not one. At the moment we are showing some ambition and trying to mix it at the top level without sovereign weath fund investment. Yes we have benefitted from the HS2 compensation but I'm not sure what you think a fairer way would be considering its a piece of farmland in the Warwickshire countryside owned by the club for nearly 50 years. It was £14.5m from the Government with the work costing £14m. The youth teams and womens teams have had major benefit from the new digs.

Let it go Mr Popodopolous. Let it go. We did nothing wrong. Reading, Wednesday and Derby have all been destroyed. What more do you want ? HS2 took nealy a quarter of our traning ground. The recompense is fair. Onwards and Upwards for us. New Stand. European football. Tangible progression. Good time to be a Villa fan right now.

Worth also noting that West Ham and Man City have stadiums built at taxpayer expense which need to be filled for political and legacy purposes. Hence the artificially low ST prices available.

My ticket has gone from £426 to £531 this term. Approx. 3,000 ST holders from last season have decided not to renew. However there are more than 25,000 people on the waiting list. I suppose that demand gives them an incentive to hike up the fees. It's a shame as we used to used one of the best priced in the Prem.

The three year EFL investigation over the league’s Profitability & Sustainability Rules concluded with Villa complying with all the regulations while in England’s second division. The Premier League also reviewed and confirmed compliance in accordance with its own policies and procedures. FFP is too complicated for clever people not to work around, and too crude to actually protect clubs, except in extreme situations.

We didn't do anything wrong. As per the Premier League and the EFL. You can wish misfortune upon us, as many of you do with Derby. But you'd be wasting your energy.

No questions to answer. We've moved on.

No. We don't

I'm well aware that their situation could easily have been us had we not attracted the owners we have now. It was a gamble and not in the spirit of the regulations I'll admit. But it saved us. Unless the gap between the top two divisions is narrowed somehow, these issues will keep coming up. And more clubs will go to the wall.

Don't judge a whole a club or its fanbase by a couple of people on a forum. I'll remind you once again that Aston Villa did nothing wrong. As declared after two separate investigations. The club is going from strength to strength right now, on and off the field. Long may that continue. I did say on here long ago that Derby will get what's coming to them. But I can take no pleasure from their current demise.

I don't like what we did, because it papers over cracks and hides a problem or a lack of funds. I am happy its being banned as P&S needs to be made less complex.

I'm sure Derby will get whats coming to them. The club is in a downward spiral anyhow with one owner who does not want to be there and no one coming to the rescue. The EFL will get them sooner or later, if they are proven to be guilty. And yes The EFL are mostly to blame. The regs have loopholes and they seem slow to react. I believe currently they are more geared towards saving clubs rather than compliance.

Let it go, Popodopolous. Let it go.

I don't believe Derby will wriggle out of any issues. They are a mess at the moment and it will take time to sort. Morris was a geniune fan of the club. Like Lansdown and Gibson are of their clubs. West Brom used to be one of the best run clubs in the country. Ruled by Jeremy Peace, who was born in the area, a fan and ruled with a rod of iron. He always got maximum value in every deal. The current Chinese owner seeks to lead in the same way. It was managerial problems which caused their relegation. When Doug Eliis was Villa's major shareholder the club was debt free, and prudent. The fans hated this. We always wanted more and more money spent on new players. But we never apprieciated what we had with him. Its shame that it always seems to be foreign billonaires nessessary to push a club forward in these times. I used to deliver newspapers to Ellis's house as a teenager. 25 minutes drive from the stadium.

At least you're honest. There is no guarantee that new foreign owners, automatically mean that the club fortunes instantly improve. My club, Villa had a Chinese owner once. As do our rivals Birmingham. Neither of us have good things to say about them. Wolves on the other hand may take a different view. Man City had a Thai owner. They hated him. Leicester City have Thai owners. The fans sing his name.

Why do you want the EFL to block the takeover ?

Those wage figures are all over place. Gregg Evans needs to go back to writing for the Birmingham Evening Mail. If you add up the estimated players wages, you get nowhere near £93m or £65m. Note also that John Terry gets an approx. £75,000 a week retainer so there is the possiblity that staff wages are included in his figures. We've been prudent on wages since our return to the Premier League but it's now acknowledged that to compete we are going to need an uplift in quality which means paying players more money. Most difficult aspect is removal of deadwood in the squad. Why should MPs be asking question about HS2 compensation? In my mind it is fair and correct.

What should their tone be ?

I get the feeling you would have enjoyed that. You really do have to let this go.

The Swiss Ramble must use an alternative method of working these figures out. I got my figures from here and they were repeated in the The Mirror https://www.sportekz.com/football/premier-league-clubs-wage-bills/ Consider also that Villa's wage bill fell from £90m to £73m before relegation. And that as I told you before Aston Villa usually try to hide the exact player wage total by including it in total staff costs. Something I've noticed us doing for about ten years.

I just wanted to follow this on from the Premier League last day thread. I'm not sure what you expected us as a club to do here. We did sell players. We also released Samba, Terry and Agbonlahor. Took a big fee for Jordan Amavi among others. At the same time John McGinn arrived for £2.5m You said on another thread that you hope my club leverages itself big with fees and wages and comes down next year, but we only spent what we earned in TV income last summer and we currently have the 3rd lowest wage bill in the top flight at £23.8m. In comparison Brighton's – £36m, Bournemouth's is £40m, and Watford's £45m. Most of our new players except Heaton, are young and can be sold to balance accounts should the worst happen.

I'm fairly sure there will be no reopening of old cases. Otherwise you'd have to get Bournemouth looked at again. And I just can't see why, especially as the EFL and Aston Villa have already said there was compliance. And you seem admant there was wrongdoing. You feel like a rigorous second look should happen. Does anyone else feel this way ? Was £56.7m too high or too low ? Do you think we made too much profit from the sale ? How much should that be ? I'll be staggered if that case was ever reopened if i'm honest. I'm very certain that we would never be subject to a points deduction or any other sanction. I'm racking my brains to think of what we could be collared for at the moment.

I don't believe FFP will be as much as a concern in the near future as it was in the past, due to Covid and the fact that our leadership is much more competent. The squad should be of good Championship standard, but a lot depends on what we can keep hold of. If we make say, £60m net on outgoing transfers i'd expect half of that figure to be available for new transfers. We could find ourselves without an experienced striker on the first team. That would not go unchecked. Personally I'm happy to return to the lower league as long as we have an astute plan for promotion - this would involve improvement on the training pitch as well as action in the transfer market. Any team that gets relegated from the Championship will have get at least £110m TV revenue before any parachute money arrives (note that we have spent ours already) I actually hope that Bristol City get the right manager in and sooner rather than later go up. I have nothing but good wishes for your club. I do find the antagonism towards Aston Villa slightly amusing.

Relegation is looming. We will sell players, some for more than what we paid for them. And we will aquire players too. Nothing unusual here. I think we will be in good shape.