Delta

34 minutes ago, downendcity said:

Just came across this post from last summer, made by a villa fan.

Obviously we have no way of knowing from what position of knowledge/expertise Begley makes his/her comments, but does it put  the cat among the pigeons, as far as Villa's ffp position last season is concerned?

Our understanding has always been ( continually reinforced with glee by Delta) that Villa Park was "sold" by the football club to another of the owners' companies and the profit thereon was applied to Villa's income, completely within ffp rules and  this enabled them to pass ffp scrutiny. According to Begley's statement, taken  on face value, it seems more to do with addressing Xia's equity position than a sale in the sense that, say, Derby undertook. Also, if the stadium was previously owned by Recon ( a Xia owned company) and if it was sale transaction, then surely the proceeds of sale would be due to Recon and not AVFC.

In a recent post Delta pointed out that perhaps our grievance with Villa is because  we could not enjoy the financial benefit of selling our stadium as Villa has,  because BCFC no longer own Ashton Gate. From  Begley's post, if VP was owned by a Xia owned company Recon, then surely Villa were in the same position

Now Im no accountant or corporate finance expert, so my interpretation might be completely wrong, but can anyone throw more light on this?

 

 

 

I do not post anything with "glee".  Let's get that straight.  I try to post facts in a constructive manner.  I may not post what you all want to read but nevertheless, the arguments are constructive.

I don't believe that there was any need to dilute Xia's shareholding - He was finished at the club the day NS & WE took over.  I also don't believe that Begley was/is correct.  The accounts show that VP was sold by the club (Aston Villa Ltd) to NSWE stadium Ltd.  Without that transaction taking place, Villa would have fallen foul of FFP and that is the reason the ground was sold.

4 hours ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Fame at last! Always for some reason, had a slight preference for the other BCFC- always seen them as the more working class side etc?

I look forward to reading his greater expertise on accounting and valuation methods/regulations.

Fair's fair though- if he actually does have it I genuinely do look forward to having a look.

BCFC are traditionally south Birmingham, AVFC are traditionally north Birmingham - Both traditionally working class.

Never mind Villa Talk - You guys have hit the headlines here:

https://www.heroesandvillains.info/forumv3/index.php?topic=55680.525

Post# 536 onwards

Quote

The £105m by owners is fantastic for debt and balance sheet but doesn't necessarily affect FFP.

I think you've now answered your own question.

Quote

Nothing to do with Mr. Hollis eh...a certain Mr. Hollis.

Check his past job and check his current job? This is with respect to the HS2 compensation.

It's not a problem - Prince William told him it was OK.

Is the UEFA rule applicable to the EFL?

As you stated previously, £105m has been pumped in by our owners.  

It's the hope that kills ya eh Pops?

£14m from Hs2  Get in.

VP is classed as an investment property along with BMH and the Holte Hotel (Note 17).

I am seeing "exceptional impairment" at note 3

Relegation perhaps and the financial impact/loss?

Day 1 of the new regime - I accept that Xia gambled recklessly with our club.  Clearly, parachute payments give you 2 good seasons but by the third, the figure is a lot lower.  It's noteworthy that our deficit is there or thereabouts our shortfall in parachute payments compared to the previous season.  Once Xia's 2 seasons ran out, there was no plan B as he had promised.

Where are you looking at the impairment?  I'll have a look.

5 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

• Well tbh, that was the case for much of last season- it was only in mid May where the ground sale was scrambled together or at least appeared like this at CH. Signs of restraint would've been an indicator of treating it seriously.
• Depends- was it cash flow or FFP related? If Xia really couldn't pay the bills pre investment then that may have had to have happened or been considered simply for solvency reasons.
• IF a case was proven, why shouldn't that happen?

Wrong - It was only last May when the penny dropped for YOU about the ground sale.  Villa would have been aware of it from day 1.  They didn't just stumble across it 3 weeks before disaster.  The fact that we remained solvent means that we would never have had to sell Grealish for under fair market value (a term that is thrashed out on here regularly when convenient).

1 hour ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Didn't take long for their gloating idiots to start up.

Haha, how does that work- would love to see his workings.

Idiots like that make me hope that Aston Villa drop and then maybe Grealish would need to be sold to comply- but then gets an 18 month freak injury slipping out of the bath just before the transfer window opens- or within a timeframe before the end of next season but out for a year and a half.

Would be a shame, wouldn't it.

Serious note, I don't actually wish injury on anyone or any player but it's the case that freak injuries can happen and scupper any backup plans that may or may not be in the offing. Idiots like that make me go to extremes on clubs.

Is it any worse than idiots who say:

"The EFL are scared of Villa"
"Villa are carrying on with no regard to FFP"
"Villa won't be punished because of Prince William"
"Villa should sell Grealish if offered £3m"
"Villa should be docked points AND lose their parachute money"

The only thing missing is "off with their heads".

Beyond reasonable doubt in whose book?  Yours or the EFLs?

3 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

The full accounts will give a proper picture.

But that means- before exceptional costs granted- that Aston Villa's losses were £68.9m and that's even with the stadium sale- Jesus!!

Granted, those exceptional costs wouldn't have arisen.

The bit about EFL and PL confirming compliance- fine on the face of it but not necessarily decisive, still could treat with caution solely because Derby and Sheffield Wednesday- and in Europe Man City, thought they were fine but as we can see it's not the case. Investigations under a new regime can be reopened!

It also suggests that the initial sign off is made and then the details investigated later. Derby back in September declared that they were compliant with FFP regs.

Those accounts will be an interesting read when they arrive at CH.

Jesus what?  £30m was a promotion clause owed to Lerner that Xia failed to honour - Nothing to do with wages, transfers, cheating etc.

Villa claim that the PL have Ok'd everything.  The EFL appear to have not done so yet.

No matter what is in those accounts, you will no doubt continue to point the finger.  Thankfully, the EFL are not as biased. 

https://www.avfc.co.uk/News/2020/02/28/financial-results-villa-2019

1 hour ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

Really I shouldn't extrapolate fans and their mindset from forums but Villa can just reek of entitlement- at least in their online offerings- see the bolded bit.

Overpricing double? More like 2/3 or 60%.

They also fail to factor into their calculations the Impairment of Villa Park in 2015/16 and justification of it, let alone a possible reversal or partial reversal.

Now this may or may not be decisive but they might look at the whole picture?

I see irony & tongue in cheek are not your strong points.

You have campaigned for us to sell assets in order to comply.  We have sold assets - Just not the ones that YOU wanted us to sell.  Rules are in place to satisfy FFP, not the warped vengence of the Bristol City fans who seem to make the rules up as they go along.  Since when has selling an asset been a loophole?  Just because you never thought about selling a ground before, does not make it a loophole.

Oh and he was wrong - If we go down, we'll come back up with a much weaker squad as Grealish, Mings & McGinn would all likely leave.

For anyone who thinks the HS2 money went towards keeping in line with FFP, here's another myth dispelled:

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/aston-villa-hs2-bodymoor-heath-17777373

I think that any rumors of embargos in May 2019 can safely be dismissed.

The Birmingham decision came in March 2019 so the EFL wouldn't have had too much time to tweak wording.  Whilst it's true that there could be different takes on enforcement, a precedent was set and the odds are that any future panel would follow the decision/precedent set by the original panel.

I think you are clutching at straws with a ground adjustment.  With Derby's being set at around £49m, it makes ours look cheap at £56m.  Furthermore, can you really see the EFL nit picking over a couple of million on a ground sale?  If it was 20 or 30 m then yes but not 4 0r 5 million.  Nobody is going to be that precise.  You are just setting yourself up for disappointment if you think otherwise.

May 2019, we were a PL side (transfer window opens June 1st).

May 2018, we were in all sorts of financial difficulty and could not sign anybody.  I have no idea whether we were on any sort of embargo but it really didn't make much difference anyway as we couldn't afford to bring anyone in.

A registration embargo is what Birmingham were placed on (and subsequently cleared of breaching).  This is because they signed Pederston and argued that if the EFL decided not to register him, they would have loaned him out.  The panel decided that the EFL had not been clear enough. 

Any reference to Villa being on a soft embargo in May 2019 is irrelevant given that they didn't have enough money to pay bills.  At the time, the whole squad was up for sale.

2 hours ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

What you don't seem to grasp is that your case is perhaps still live, albeit in a state of hiatus- suspended animation.

I'd say it's up in the air- just because you have not yet sanctioned rules doesn't mean that Investigations couldn't down the line prove it to be the case. I suspect even a small adjustment to the Villa Park sale and leaseback price could throw up problems, to May 2019 at least.

Of course I'm aware of this.  However, at this moment in time we are under.  Hence no action from the EFL/PL.

I'm confident that we'll remain under and with a projected overspend of around £25m (your figures), it would have to be a hefty hike on the ground sale to take us over.

You are hoping that we'll be dragged into it.  I see this as little more than straw clutching.  You've speculated all the way through this and being wrong every step of the way.

Out of interest, do you know what figure your lease is for AG?

11 hours ago, Harry said:

Quelle surprise. 
A Villa fan in denial. 
Truth is pal, you were very very close to breaching the regs. It was widely acknowledged by the whole football world. 
You may have just gotten away with it. Just. 
Suck it up, be grateful that you might’ve just sneaked under, but don’t come here acting high and ******* mighty and that you weren’t pushing the line. Cuz you were. Very close. 

Denial of what exactly?

There is nothing to deny.  We have broken no rules.  Being close to a threshold is a completely different thing to being over it.

3 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

Yep, because:

• he was 18 at the time, having made 2 senior sub appearances
• he didn’t cost us a several £million loan fee
• he didn’t cost us £50k plus in wages per week

We would love to have brought him back here last season (more so to piss you off probably), but guess what?  We accepted he was beyond our budget.  We would’ve liked him back when he was going to Swansea, but we accepted we couldn’tt afford it.

You obviously could.....

......or took the gamble you’d be promoted before the EFL would act if (if!!!) you did go over.

Interesting

Where have you sourced the wages that we were paying him from?

Likewise, where have you sourced the "several million" that we were paying for him from?

4 minutes ago, Davefevs said:

You miss the debate.....again!!!

Your argument was that if you had to sell a player because of FFP you shouldn’t have resort to playing youngsters, you should be able to bring in someone equally as good.  If you can do that for free, then great.

We don’t have FFP to worry about, because we accept that when we sell a player for £7m (Flint) we can’t then go and spend another £7m on his replacement.  We go and buy Webster for £3.5m.  When we sell him for £20m (so glad it was Brighton rather than you!!), we can spend £7m on Kalas.  When we sell Reid for £9m, we buy Andi Weimann for £2m and Mo Eisa for £800k.  You see that when your costs outweighs your income, you have to make that money up somewhere.  And then we also rely on bringing Kelly (An 18 year old in) through because we sell a Joe Bryan....and sell him for £15m ahead of the end of our accounting period, and we report a profit.  You see, we are forced into bringing youngsters in.  Some will come through our academy like Reid, Bryan and Kelly.  Others like Flint we bought for 300k as a 22 year old late developer, Brownhill for youth development compensation.  We then develop them.  We accept that.  You see bitter that Grealish might have had to be sold.  But you’re a huge club, so that’s ok.

When we see your 18/19 accounts and they’ve been analysed by more (much more) experts than me in Kieran and Swiss, we’ll see what’s really happened.  Might all be fine, in which case you can sit their smugly.  But it does make you wonder why so many people have questioned your FFP position..

Great

Who said we had to sell players because of FFP though?

3 minutes ago, reddevil said:

Just a couple of points on this. I don’t get the arguement that having loan players is a way of pleading poverty, Tammy could easily have cost Villa c£4-5m for last season based on estimates for loan fees and assuming his wages are paid in full. However the bigger arguement is more conceptual, FFP exists to make the league more susbstainable, and clubs like Villa, Sheffield Wed, Derby and Reading have have used a loophole to bastardize it, to the detriment of other clubs playing within the spirt of the rules.

So you can loan Tammy but we can't?