Winning the Europa League and finishing fourth did not inoculate Villa and Spurs were not hampered by a season of woe
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.
The rules encouraged the rise of the creative football accountant, masters of monetary chicanery, who were sometimes successful, occasionally not, at finding loopholes in the rulebook. These rules domestically meant that clubs could lose up to £105m over three years, subject to various adjustments.
In 2023-24 Uefa announced a change to its rules, and the brave new world of squad cost ratios (SCR) was introduced. SCR limits a club’s spending on squad costs to 70% of football revenue. Squad costs are defined as first-team player wages, amortisation (transfer fees spread over the contract life, so a £50m signing on a five year deal has an amortisation cost of £10m a year), impairment (don’t ask unless you are studying an accounting course) and agent fees.
Football revenue is in effect matchday ticket sales, broadcast income and commercial activities. It excludes the ‘Chelsea Way’ accounting method of selling club-owned real estate, women’s teams and anything else owned by the club to another company controlled by the club owners to generate additional profit.
The old cost control rules still operate in the background, limiting total losses for clubs in Uefa competitions to €60m over three years. The Premier League has followed suit, except it allows the remainder of its clubs to spend 85% of football revenue on squad costs. The Premier League rules also have added to the football fan vocabulary phrases such as sustainability and systemic resilience, green and red thresholds and negative feedback loops (not the ones seen on social media after a weekend defeat).
As a consequence, clubs have an incentive to generate as much revenue as possible, because for every £100 of revenue at least £70 can be invested in the squad. Provided the money is spent well it gives the richer clubs an edge in terms of results. This is why Spurs have such an advantage over Villa and many other ambitious/aspirational clubs in the Premier League such as Newcastle, Forest, Leeds and Everton. Daniel Levy, Spurs’ much maligned former chair, was visionary in the move from White Hart Lane to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Spurs have been transformed from a football club to a multi-sport, multi-function entertainment group, which, importantly, has nearly all its profits from NFL matches, boxing bouts and summer concerts falling within the definition of football revenue.
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The non-football events have proven so lucrative that Spurs are partly inoculated from a poor season on the pitch and/or non-participation in Uefa competitions. Since the stadium move commercial revenue has increased from £59m to £277m in 2024-25, a season in which Spurs played in the Europa League instead of the Champions League. Villa were in the Champions League with all the attention that brings but made £98m from commercial activities.
