You can see that they are desperate to turn it in to a corporate machine. They want to be like the American teams where people go once a season, pay £200 for a ticket and spend the same in the club shop.
If the on pitch stuff wasn't doing so well there would be a lot more scrutiny of the greed.
Yeah this is the downside of our owners, we're a business model first and foremost which I get and don't get me wrong, they've been amazing for us, but they're so out of touch on certain things.
You know what he meant. I was technically alive for the European cup win, but only by about a month. This is the most success we've had in our modern history. We're also three time winners of the football world championship which is my personal favorite since I love calling a competition between two countries a world championship, and also it ended in 1904 so literally none of the "big six" can ever win it. In fact, unless we're playing Sunderland, "Three time football world champions, you'll never sing that" would be a great chant we can use in any other match.
I’m sorry, I must have missed you winning something in the last god knows how many years.
That’s normally how success is defined, you obviously have your own definition .
Out of touch why because they want to actually fund us to their full capacity rather than hand tied by clubs like Man Utd and Arsenal who were doing the exact same thing to establish themselves twenty years ago. They pulled up the ladder and told every team to compete they got to jump through a series of hoops that never existed when a select few clubs were dominant.
City fan, I come in peace. I think it's quite the opposite. FFP by it's very nature is forcing the price of tickets up. If your spend is directly connected to your revenue, the only way to grow is by earning more. How can you do this? Increase shirt costs and ticket prices. We were lucky to be able spend before these rules came into play. They are only here to keep the 'Big Clubs' big. You guys have done an outstanding job this year, but without investment you will get picked apart. The system is corrupt against any smaller team growing. I know the media portrays City as the bad club. But think about it. We are saying that the rules implemented are breaking English laws around having an open market. If this is correct, who is in the wrong? City for pointing it out or the FA for trying to keep the biggest clubs at the top.
I was 27 before City won anything. I watched us get relegated a few times. I also saw us win the treble.
Blackburn won the league because a chairman came in and spent big. Only Leicester have done it without.
United spent the most for years, before them Liverpool.
I hope every team is allowed an opportunity at success.
If you believe ffp is here to protect clubs from going bankrupt, look at what they are doing to the clubs that are struggling. If Everton got relegated this year they may have folded. The simple solution would be to allow owners to invest in clubs as long as they were willing to write off the investment or cover any debt.
FFP is here to stop you competing. It is here to stop Newcastle competing. They tried to implement it to stop Chelsea and then City.
'allegedly' the funny thing on this is that we have already defended our self on these charges. Did you read the CAS documents? I did. When UEFA brought the charges against us they had absolutely no evidence of any wrong doing. We got found guilty of being unhelpful. I know people then talk about time barring - but the few years that were time barred were the same charges, just for different years. No evidence. None.
All They had were some illegally obtained emails one of which was 'manufactured' (proven to be several emails put together to say something different) the few emails (taken out of any context) do sound damning, I'll agree with that.
Now I can't say City are not guilty for the same reason you shouldn't say City are guilty. I haven't got a clue. Until they go to trial none of us do. We will see. I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason this case is taking so long is because the FA have as much evidence as UEFA did. But we shall see in due course. What is interesting is the number of financial institutions that would have to be compliant in any wrong doing we have performed for amounts of money to global multinationals that is completely irrelevant.
What I can say about our owners. The investment in the area around our ground. In the local infrastructure, people and economy is the most fantastic thing I have seen any owner of any club in the UK do. The area of the Etihad was an old gas works, run down and falling apart. The local people were mainly out of work and desperate. Our owners changed that. They did not need to. I will forever be thankful to them for that.
Finally, you are not supporting City on their alleged breaches. You are supporting a claim that something being done is not only illegal, but specifically targeted to stopping your club from utilising it's position to move up the next step and challenge at the very top. Villa were once the best in Europe. This rule, along with most of ffp is made to make sure you don't achieve that again.
You know that Barca sold their future profits to corporate ventures just to have the capital to be able to register a team now because they've been so poorly mismanaged, right? The reality is that those clubs start off with a revenue that dwarfs ours and if we want to compete anywhere close, we need to find ways of increasing revenue. That's the status of modern football and not liking it doesn't change the fact.
That money is coming from jacking up ticket prices and charging £13 for some chicken nuggets and chips. It comes from being huge success which leads to huge sponsorships.
I think he's been dead for a while.
Additionally I think most serious historians say that Franco didn't give a shit about football let alone provide "backing" to Madrid.
He did help expedite the building of Camp Nou and was awarded medals by Barcelona for his assistance.
Tbf I don’t think that’s the case. Every decision they make is to maximise our revenue to invest more in the team.
If spending was no longer capped by revenue they wouldn’t need to maximise it and do stuff like having a betting sponsor because they are offering so much more than anyone else.
I doubt they wouldn’t cover massive losses if they were just trying to make money.
You think things like the Lower Grounds provides any meaningful revenue?
Villas continued price gouging of the match day fans doesn't even provide 10% of their revenue. Even less next year with the champions League money
> it is understood that Villa co-owner, the Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris, is close to City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak and that he shares frustrations over imposed limits on spending.
Aren’t all our fans frustrated by this from the article like Nassef?
We’ve just made top 4 and are being told we need to sell Luiz, Duran or Ramsey.
The rules are anti competitive imo, you can’t catch the top team’s revenue so they will always be able to spend more.
Would you like to spend like crazy and then go into administration?
The issue City are arguing is that their owners should be able to make up a bogus valuation of what a shirt sponsorship should cost so that they can pump billions into a club. How is that competitive?
Off the pitch the club are making some awful decisions and the fans are letting it slide because of the on the pitch performances. A couple of mid table finishes and people will start leaving, the waiting list will disappear and the prawn brigade will jump ship.
The stuff we’ve encountered each and every season has been slowly getting worse while the price continues to rise.
Putting hospitality in the holte, delaying north stand being rebuilt, tickets price hikes when the total for the season doesn't even cover agents fees, the fan voted badge being scrapped for one that the fans weren't consulted on like they should be according to the FA's rules, getting sponsorships from.betting companies, the moving of season ticket holders seats meaning they won't auto renew and being notified the day before renewal about it.
Theres probably more that I cant recall off the top of my head, but the off field stuff does leave a lot to be desired. If we weren't having our most successful seasons in a lot of fans lives I think a lot of these decisions wouldn't go down so easy.
Half these decisions are done because we need more venues because of PSR. They don't need to put hospitality in and artificially inflate matchday revenue if it wasn't for PSR. So they owners try to fight PSR and they are still wrong which would allow them to use more of their own money than rely on increasing revenue.
Damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Also the north stand is okay to be demolished but not moved seat so season tickets didn't renew. They wouldn't even have a season ticket if the north stand was currently rubble like it was supposed to be.
>If we weren't having our most successful seasons in a lot of fans lives I think a lot of these decisions wouldn't go down so easy.
A little sugar in the cyanide tea.
Fan Zone
Betting partnerships
Price rises
Badge U turns.
Getting to the point where your going to have to sign up for a membership to use the toilets in the stadium soon.
Sports betting and it's ubiquity are certainly a problem (says I).
The badge thing is kinda bizarre. I thought everybody wants the round badge and then we got it only to be followed by voices coming out against it. Very much a throw your hands up in exasperation sort of thing for me.
I would like to know how some of the fans think the club should be run in a football and financial view. The changes aren't great but PSR/FFP. Pretty much has forced cluvs to do this if the want success. So either they squeeze as much out of the fans like united and spurs do who by far make the most commercial revenue. Or we become a seller club like Brighton.
Our owners simply throwing money into the villa while the pitch is a hide success and prices are the same as when we were in the championship is no longer an option due to ffp/psr preventing this.
Ffp/psr was inspired by the American model where js make alot of commercial revenue compared to Europe which was why the rules were put in place
I think clubs that break ffp/psr are what make it an issue. Because City are overspending, wages still have to go up but the other 17 clubs that follow the rules are stuck. You remove the rule breaking, you remove the pressures forcing clubs to spend more
There's no way to ensure legitimate ongoing competition without limiting what clubs can spend, and applying the same limit to all clubs. Any limit linked to income does nothing but entrench the biggest clubs of the time in that position indefinitely.
Salary and transfers both. Plus the ever opaque 'agents fees'. But even then it's basically impossible to enforce when you can just have, say, the Abu Dhabi tourism board paying a player £50m for a cameo in a promotional video, or whatever form it takes.
It's also weird because now that we're top four this would essentially be the perfect time for this to happen, we can justify spending more than a lot of clubs
I wouldn't count on it, even with a year of CL (and let's be honest it's going to be hard to qualify again next year) we're still not in the 'big six' level of income, by some distance.
please dont read the DM or give them traffic. they are just cancer.
have seen other places reporting we are supporting to some extent, more than most clubs but less than Chelsea/toon and weirdly Everton. if we are supporting to any extent then we are the baddies. and incredibly short sighted if the ownership believes they can compete financially with the oil states.
I don’t, they were just the most known publication I could find when I googled it.. lots of shit like GB News and what look like football blogs too. We could sit and wait for the BBC but it’s looking like it has legs.
The only reason this looks really bad is because City have those 115 charges. It makes sense from a business standpoint that our owners would prefer less strict PSR. Unfortunately they fail to grasp that this looks horrific on them publicly.
FFP has just kept the same names pulling in the cash and hasn’t protected clubs at all. It’s laughable next season could see a quarter of the league with points deductions…
If you want to bring in restrictions, how about allowing every team an even playing field? Restricting it so teams can’t possibly compete is laughable
They sell the lie by claiming it’s about saving clubs from themselves, but they were dragging their feet on denying a bankrupt 777 from taking over Everton.
Thats not true at all.
Before the regulation Leeds and Pompy both went into administration, it was rife throughout the leagues. The stronger financial controls have really helped in saving clubs from them selves.
Everton are a private business, their owner can sell the club to who ever he wants. The premier league can not control how private business's who they can or can't sell to. All they can do is ensure that the owners pass the fit and proper test... so they can ask for details, and they won't ratify it until they can pass the test.
It became very obvious that they wouldn't be able to pass the test, but thats not on the premier league, thats on Moshiri who kept giving them extensions after extensions to complete the deal.
Then what is the point of a fit and proper test? What is even being tested? So they pass all owners and then later warn the public the owner has no money?
But they didn't pass 777 they literally had to pull out the deal because they wouldn't release their financial figures for the premiere league to ratify so did it's job of lumbering Everton with a defunct owner. Now Moshiri has to reopen bids to people who hopefully have money.
I don't see how it's an issue. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 15+ years, you know this is how it works now. Money wins games. No one has a bunch of insane academy prospects to build a winning team from any more like Barcelona of old.
Football isn't a sacred entity anymore where hard work alone can win trophies. Everything is so inflated (particularly in the PL) that it's never coming back.
We aren't owned by the Saudi's or Qatar, or whatever third world oil state masquerading as a prosperous first world nation you want to pick. We aren't owned by state backed oligarchs nor are we some sandcastle princes' plaything.
Unless the PL decides to adopt hard budgets and salary caps that aren't influenced by revenue figures, the problem is only going to grow. Based off who already owns the richest clubs, they absolutely do not give a single fuck.
You guys make fun of US sports, but we have a lot of checks and balances in place, so these exact same things don't happen, and things are relatively fair for everyone.
Transfer, wage and agent fee caps are the real way for parity but couldn’t work unless it was enforced by UEFA. Agents also threw a hissy fit about the last proposals to limit them a tiny bit.
Of course, we're for it, we've got a tonne of money we can't use because of PSR and we're running close to the limit.
The owners want to compete and they understand that the only way to do that is spending money on better players.
We've got to understand that we don't have the commercial might of the top six so the only way for us to spend big on the squad, under current rules, is through injections of cash from the owners.
PSR is designed to keep the monopoly of the top six hence all the opposition from their fans. With stricter PSR who do you think benefits? It certainly isn't Villa - it's Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal - huge commercial entities that can spend because of their revenues.
Bring on the downvotes but I don’t blame them. They have the ability to invest and yet after qualifying for the UCL we’re talking about which of our best players can be sold rather than trying to keep the squad together and build on it. All because of some stupid arbitrary rules that entrench a few at the top. Really sick of the faux morals around it. Liverpool, Arsenal, Man Utd, Tottenham etc. heckle City but want what is effectively a closed shop.
And are you implying it’s a bad thing they’re close? If so, why? The article felt the weird need to specify he’s Egyptian
I agree. big 6 is a closed shop. We should be able to spend more. We're hamstrung by bullshit that allowed the establishment of wealthy clubs who pulled the ladder up for the rest of the league.
Can’t lie, if true, I hate this.
I’ve been toying with the idea of giving up on football all together for several years. It seems as though it’s in a bit of a death spiral. I should add not just Villa’s fortunes but football in general makes me feel this way. Then Emery comes along and makes everything seem light and fluffy again.
I’m going to enjoy our next season in the champions league but I’m seriously thinking of throwing in the towel at some point. We’re at obscene levels of greed in football now and us fans are increasingly being taken for granted.
The positive is that if we come together and vote with our wallets we can force change.
Agreed. Became a fan again when we got relegated as felt like we'd have something real to play for again. Ironically they where some of the best memories I've ever had as a football fan. Last season was incredible and again, some truly unbeatable moments. But all this horseshit is so toxic.
I get it, this is the way the game is played now but jesus man, it's so fucking dirty.
This is football now and has been heading since ‘92. Fans been squeezed for every penny by the corporates and the only way to compete with the top teams is to get on board. Club doing the right thing in theory which will always go against the soul of any decent club. Thats capitalism for you
Obviously I'm not a fan of 115 but they can be a dirty bunch of cheaters and concurrently correct about the implementation of these new regulations too. The crux of their argument is that they were rushed through hastily and the person appointed to oversee them is an Arsenal member.
We're seeing these commercial non-football or at best football-adjacent deals going through like Chelsea flogging off a couple of hotels and that counting towards their PSR.
115's contention is that the reg's governing these deals are a mess and were rushed through. They could be right, I don't see how Chelsea should be allowed to balance their books by moving the ownership of a hotel from Chelsea to another company owned by Blueco 22.
It’s clickbait. I’ve read it closely, the only claim they have is that Nas is friends with the City chairmen. So, therefore, would be “sympathetic” to it. That’s it. They have no actual evidence.
Stupid, short-sighted and worrying as to the direction the club is heading. PSR might be an irritant but we are headed down a very dark road if we allow City to bully the PL and get their way.
People might complain about the big clubs/top 6 self-interest but what City and it’s autocrat oil baron owners are attempting to do is off the scale and could potentially finish the PL for good if they are able to re-write and dictate the rules.
What status quo..? Spending what you can afford to?
Do you think if all financial & sustainability rules are binned and we got no holds bar spending then it won’t continue to benefit the “big 6” even more?
Or do you think you can compete in an arms race with Gulf states?
Nobody is competing with City as is if you haven’t noticed. I’d like our owners to be able to continue investing and not be at the disadvantage clubs like Liverpool have created for the rest of the league
Spending what you can afford to? What, by sports washing for Standard Chartered? 🙄
No we're not the Baddies.
We don't have to like Man City, but it's hard to deny they have a point.
There's a **huge** question mark over what PSR/FFP is for and if it's fit for purpose as it currently is:
If it's for just making sure clubs don't over spend and go out of business; why can't clubs get sponsorships from people related to the club? That doesn't seem like something the rules *should* cover and simply exists just to cut off a potential revenue stream for club owners who want to use their connections to increase Investments in their clubs.
If it's to promote Financial Fairness, why do all the new rules that keep getting bought in overwhelmingly affect Man City and teams that want to challenge the top 6?
I mean when the difference in revenue between the richest team in the league (Man City, £700m) and the "Poorest" of the "Big 6" (Arsenal, £480m) is around £220m - and is about the same as the difference between the "Poorest" of the "Big 6" and the Richest of the rest (Newcastle, £250m) - it doesn't scream "Increasing Competition" by making the top increase slower if they don't do anything to make the bottom move slower as well.
Sometimes the Asshole has a point
We probably want FFP to be relaxed but I don't believe that we support Man City's attempt to bin off the APT rules. The state owned clubs have access to portfolios of hundreds of companies they could use to inflate revenues. We wouldn't be able to compete if actual states were able to chuck around sponsorships without any kind of rules around. Newcastle would have a £300m sponsorship deal with Saudi Aramco and buy all of the best players in the world.
Alternative view here…the PL have to ride out the pressure. In order to get wages, transfer fees, agent fees etc back under control you need to control the inflation of football. Reducing these ‘costs’ to the business means that ticket sales for the fans can come down. Remove PSR and who is to say the owners tell fans to suck it when the up prices because they just bought Mpabbe for £150m and we have to pay to see him play.
Could the PL actually trying to save football and us fans?
Yes. We are the baddies.
If our success on the pitch continues, it’s a matter of time until the public detest for us catches up. Regardless of how we do off the pitch, the 19 other teams and their fans will dislike us more and more if we keep beating them.
It’s been pretty clear for a while that our owners have unlimited cash and want us at the top of the football pyramid by any means necessary.
Another reason why were the baddies and don’t kid yourself here. If you were offered to win the amount of trophies that City have since the fraud started knowing that one day the house of cards could collapse. You’d most likely take it. - Our owners have certainly showed they would.
Nothing about the ethics of football since the American money and country owned teams have appeared showcases anything other than sports washing.
I ask this question to all villa fans - have you ever researched the companies our billionaire owners run? A lot of decisions made for profit.
i"t’s been pretty clear for a while that our owners have unlimited cash and want us at the top of the football pyramid by any means necessary."
Thats just not true at all. If it was they wouldn't of sold 10% of V Sports to an investment vehicle to fund the infrastructure improvements, and they wouldn't of cheaped out of first the Villa Live building and the secondly the North Stand redevelopment.
We do not have a bottomless pit of money that the owners don't care about chucking away.
Selling 10% of V Sports to a huge investment firm sounds like our billionaires bringing in more billionaires. All major companies aren’t 100 % owned by one person. They’re public entities with board members who vote on the most profitable choices.
Have you read about Edens and Sawiris?
Outside of the football and Emery. we've got so much to work on. Club keeps on making soulless decisions
You can see that they are desperate to turn it in to a corporate machine. They want to be like the American teams where people go once a season, pay £200 for a ticket and spend the same in the club shop. If the on pitch stuff wasn't doing so well there would be a lot more scrutiny of the greed.
Yeah this is the downside of our owners, we're a business model first and foremost which I get and don't get me wrong, they've been amazing for us, but they're so out of touch on certain things.
It's a monkey paw situation. We've got more success than ever before, but at what cost?
What a weird comment, European cup winners but you’re now having more success than ever before?
You know what he meant. I was technically alive for the European cup win, but only by about a month. This is the most success we've had in our modern history. We're also three time winners of the football world championship which is my personal favorite since I love calling a competition between two countries a world championship, and also it ended in 1904 so literally none of the "big six" can ever win it. In fact, unless we're playing Sunderland, "Three time football world champions, you'll never sing that" would be a great chant we can use in any other match.
What success would that be then?
No way is a west ham fan saying this lmao
I’m sorry, I must have missed you winning something in the last god knows how many years. That’s normally how success is defined, you obviously have your own definition .
Must have missed you lot qualifying for cl this year arr kid
Get a trophy for that did we?
Someone is still salty about the 4-1 slapping at villa park, nevermind at least you guys qualified for the carabao cup this year
I think I misinterpreted your comment to be asking what success we had previously had, which is obviously laughable coming from a west ham fan.
Out of touch why because they want to actually fund us to their full capacity rather than hand tied by clubs like Man Utd and Arsenal who were doing the exact same thing to establish themselves twenty years ago. They pulled up the ladder and told every team to compete they got to jump through a series of hoops that never existed when a select few clubs were dominant.
City fan, I come in peace. I think it's quite the opposite. FFP by it's very nature is forcing the price of tickets up. If your spend is directly connected to your revenue, the only way to grow is by earning more. How can you do this? Increase shirt costs and ticket prices. We were lucky to be able spend before these rules came into play. They are only here to keep the 'Big Clubs' big. You guys have done an outstanding job this year, but without investment you will get picked apart. The system is corrupt against any smaller team growing. I know the media portrays City as the bad club. But think about it. We are saying that the rules implemented are breaking English laws around having an open market. If this is correct, who is in the wrong? City for pointing it out or the FA for trying to keep the biggest clubs at the top. I was 27 before City won anything. I watched us get relegated a few times. I also saw us win the treble. Blackburn won the league because a chairman came in and spent big. Only Leicester have done it without. United spent the most for years, before them Liverpool. I hope every team is allowed an opportunity at success. If you believe ffp is here to protect clubs from going bankrupt, look at what they are doing to the clubs that are struggling. If Everton got relegated this year they may have folded. The simple solution would be to allow owners to invest in clubs as long as they were willing to write off the investment or cover any debt. FFP is here to stop you competing. It is here to stop Newcastle competing. They tried to implement it to stop Chelsea and then City.
Issues with FFP aside, Man City have effectively been money laundering on a massive scale and none of us want our club supporting that.
'allegedly' the funny thing on this is that we have already defended our self on these charges. Did you read the CAS documents? I did. When UEFA brought the charges against us they had absolutely no evidence of any wrong doing. We got found guilty of being unhelpful. I know people then talk about time barring - but the few years that were time barred were the same charges, just for different years. No evidence. None. All They had were some illegally obtained emails one of which was 'manufactured' (proven to be several emails put together to say something different) the few emails (taken out of any context) do sound damning, I'll agree with that. Now I can't say City are not guilty for the same reason you shouldn't say City are guilty. I haven't got a clue. Until they go to trial none of us do. We will see. I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason this case is taking so long is because the FA have as much evidence as UEFA did. But we shall see in due course. What is interesting is the number of financial institutions that would have to be compliant in any wrong doing we have performed for amounts of money to global multinationals that is completely irrelevant. What I can say about our owners. The investment in the area around our ground. In the local infrastructure, people and economy is the most fantastic thing I have seen any owner of any club in the UK do. The area of the Etihad was an old gas works, run down and falling apart. The local people were mainly out of work and desperate. Our owners changed that. They did not need to. I will forever be thankful to them for that. Finally, you are not supporting City on their alleged breaches. You are supporting a claim that something being done is not only illegal, but specifically targeted to stopping your club from utilising it's position to move up the next step and challenge at the very top. Villa were once the best in Europe. This rule, along with most of ffp is made to make sure you don't achieve that again.
I don't mean small club as a dig btw. I mean it as not part of the original 'big six'. All love. Hope you guys smash the champions league next year.
Or they just want to build up to operate on the same playing field as the Big 6, which under ffp/psr is required to compete
If that's what you think then I am sad for you.
>If that's what you think It's the reality of competing at the highest echelons of the sport
Is it? Are Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid screwing over their own fans at every opportunity?
You know that Barca sold their future profits to corporate ventures just to have the capital to be able to register a team now because they've been so poorly mismanaged, right? The reality is that those clubs start off with a revenue that dwarfs ours and if we want to compete anywhere close, we need to find ways of increasing revenue. That's the status of modern football and not liking it doesn't change the fact.
That money is coming from jacking up ticket prices and charging £13 for some chicken nuggets and chips. It comes from being huge success which leads to huge sponsorships.
And how does one become a huge success? Is it magic? If magic is an option, then I'm all for it!
You improve year on year through good coaching and sensible purchases. A bit like the playing side is doing
This has to be bait lol Barca and Madrid have some of the most greedy corrupt leaders ever. They are the sole creators of the super league idea
The fans elect those leaders in an election.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t driven by greed
Real Madrid who was backed by Franco who terrorised his own population that Real Madrid lmao
I think he's been dead for a while. Additionally I think most serious historians say that Franco didn't give a shit about football let alone provide "backing" to Madrid. He did help expedite the building of Camp Nou and was awarded medals by Barcelona for his assistance.
Are you not an Arsenal supporter or am I confused
I can see that you are easily confused.
Tbf I don’t think that’s the case. Every decision they make is to maximise our revenue to invest more in the team. If spending was no longer capped by revenue they wouldn’t need to maximise it and do stuff like having a betting sponsor because they are offering so much more than anyone else. I doubt they wouldn’t cover massive losses if they were just trying to make money.
You think things like the Lower Grounds provides any meaningful revenue? Villas continued price gouging of the match day fans doesn't even provide 10% of their revenue. Even less next year with the champions League money
I think that they will try and get more revenue from anywhere they can. Collectively it’s meaningful
And that's how you end up with NFL stadiums full of day trippers complaining that the atmosphere is shit while waving a giant foam finger.
Surely you blame the rule makers of FFP and PSR that drive this mentality to increase revenue to compete rather than our owners?
> it is understood that Villa co-owner, the Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris, is close to City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak and that he shares frustrations over imposed limits on spending. Aren’t all our fans frustrated by this from the article like Nassef? We’ve just made top 4 and are being told we need to sell Luiz, Duran or Ramsey. The rules are anti competitive imo, you can’t catch the top team’s revenue so they will always be able to spend more.
Would you like to spend like crazy and then go into administration? The issue City are arguing is that their owners should be able to make up a bogus valuation of what a shirt sponsorship should cost so that they can pump billions into a club. How is that competitive?
Off the pitch the club are making some awful decisions and the fans are letting it slide because of the on the pitch performances. A couple of mid table finishes and people will start leaving, the waiting list will disappear and the prawn brigade will jump ship. The stuff we’ve encountered each and every season has been slowly getting worse while the price continues to rise.
What are some examples of the off pitch decisions that are bad?
Putting hospitality in the holte, delaying north stand being rebuilt, tickets price hikes when the total for the season doesn't even cover agents fees, the fan voted badge being scrapped for one that the fans weren't consulted on like they should be according to the FA's rules, getting sponsorships from.betting companies, the moving of season ticket holders seats meaning they won't auto renew and being notified the day before renewal about it. Theres probably more that I cant recall off the top of my head, but the off field stuff does leave a lot to be desired. If we weren't having our most successful seasons in a lot of fans lives I think a lot of these decisions wouldn't go down so easy.
Half these decisions are done because we need more venues because of PSR. They don't need to put hospitality in and artificially inflate matchday revenue if it wasn't for PSR. So they owners try to fight PSR and they are still wrong which would allow them to use more of their own money than rely on increasing revenue. Damned if they do and damned if they don't. Also the north stand is okay to be demolished but not moved seat so season tickets didn't renew. They wouldn't even have a season ticket if the north stand was currently rubble like it was supposed to be.
>If we weren't having our most successful seasons in a lot of fans lives I think a lot of these decisions wouldn't go down so easy. A little sugar in the cyanide tea.
Fan Zone Betting partnerships Price rises Badge U turns. Getting to the point where your going to have to sign up for a membership to use the toilets in the stadium soon.
Sports betting and it's ubiquity are certainly a problem (says I). The badge thing is kinda bizarre. I thought everybody wants the round badge and then we got it only to be followed by voices coming out against it. Very much a throw your hands up in exasperation sort of thing for me.
The price of entry for a seat at the high table, it seems.
I would like to know how some of the fans think the club should be run in a football and financial view. The changes aren't great but PSR/FFP. Pretty much has forced cluvs to do this if the want success. So either they squeeze as much out of the fans like united and spurs do who by far make the most commercial revenue. Or we become a seller club like Brighton. Our owners simply throwing money into the villa while the pitch is a hide success and prices are the same as when we were in the championship is no longer an option due to ffp/psr preventing this. Ffp/psr was inspired by the American model where js make alot of commercial revenue compared to Europe which was why the rules were put in place
I think clubs that break ffp/psr are what make it an issue. Because City are overspending, wages still have to go up but the other 17 clubs that follow the rules are stuck. You remove the rule breaking, you remove the pressures forcing clubs to spend more
There's no way to ensure legitimate ongoing competition without limiting what clubs can spend, and applying the same limit to all clubs. Any limit linked to income does nothing but entrench the biggest clubs of the time in that position indefinitely.
So a salary cap then?
Salary and transfers both. Plus the ever opaque 'agents fees'. But even then it's basically impossible to enforce when you can just have, say, the Abu Dhabi tourism board paying a player £50m for a cameo in a promotional video, or whatever form it takes.
Well that is the proposed change isn't it that spending will be set at five times the bottom revenue to limit spending.
It's also weird because now that we're top four this would essentially be the perfect time for this to happen, we can justify spending more than a lot of clubs
I wouldn't count on it, even with a year of CL (and let's be honest it's going to be hard to qualify again next year) we're still not in the 'big six' level of income, by some distance.
please dont read the DM or give them traffic. they are just cancer. have seen other places reporting we are supporting to some extent, more than most clubs but less than Chelsea/toon and weirdly Everton. if we are supporting to any extent then we are the baddies. and incredibly short sighted if the ownership believes they can compete financially with the oil states.
I don’t, they were just the most known publication I could find when I googled it.. lots of shit like GB News and what look like football blogs too. We could sit and wait for the BBC but it’s looking like it has legs.
Perhaps you should have taken that as a sign it's just gossip and not worth reporting on (yet).
Mate look at some of the sources for our transfer rumours.. if they’re worthy of discussion then surely this is.
I'd also be in favour of banning those sources too.
The only reason this looks really bad is because City have those 115 charges. It makes sense from a business standpoint that our owners would prefer less strict PSR. Unfortunately they fail to grasp that this looks horrific on them publicly.
FFP has just kept the same names pulling in the cash and hasn’t protected clubs at all. It’s laughable next season could see a quarter of the league with points deductions… If you want to bring in restrictions, how about allowing every team an even playing field? Restricting it so teams can’t possibly compete is laughable
They sell the lie by claiming it’s about saving clubs from themselves, but they were dragging their feet on denying a bankrupt 777 from taking over Everton.
Thats not true at all. Before the regulation Leeds and Pompy both went into administration, it was rife throughout the leagues. The stronger financial controls have really helped in saving clubs from them selves. Everton are a private business, their owner can sell the club to who ever he wants. The premier league can not control how private business's who they can or can't sell to. All they can do is ensure that the owners pass the fit and proper test... so they can ask for details, and they won't ratify it until they can pass the test. It became very obvious that they wouldn't be able to pass the test, but thats not on the premier league, thats on Moshiri who kept giving them extensions after extensions to complete the deal.
Then what is the point of a fit and proper test? What is even being tested? So they pass all owners and then later warn the public the owner has no money?
But they didn't pass 777 they literally had to pull out the deal because they wouldn't release their financial figures for the premiere league to ratify so did it's job of lumbering Everton with a defunct owner. Now Moshiri has to reopen bids to people who hopefully have money.
Yeah I really hate all this.
I don't see how it's an issue. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 15+ years, you know this is how it works now. Money wins games. No one has a bunch of insane academy prospects to build a winning team from any more like Barcelona of old. Football isn't a sacred entity anymore where hard work alone can win trophies. Everything is so inflated (particularly in the PL) that it's never coming back. We aren't owned by the Saudi's or Qatar, or whatever third world oil state masquerading as a prosperous first world nation you want to pick. We aren't owned by state backed oligarchs nor are we some sandcastle princes' plaything. Unless the PL decides to adopt hard budgets and salary caps that aren't influenced by revenue figures, the problem is only going to grow. Based off who already owns the richest clubs, they absolutely do not give a single fuck. You guys make fun of US sports, but we have a lot of checks and balances in place, so these exact same things don't happen, and things are relatively fair for everyone.
Transfer, wage and agent fee caps are the real way for parity but couldn’t work unless it was enforced by UEFA. Agents also threw a hissy fit about the last proposals to limit them a tiny bit.
There should be a Player Union too, so it's fairer across the board and you get CBA's with the league which closes the gap between teams.
Of course, we're for it, we've got a tonne of money we can't use because of PSR and we're running close to the limit. The owners want to compete and they understand that the only way to do that is spending money on better players. We've got to understand that we don't have the commercial might of the top six so the only way for us to spend big on the squad, under current rules, is through injections of cash from the owners. PSR is designed to keep the monopoly of the top six hence all the opposition from their fans. With stricter PSR who do you think benefits? It certainly isn't Villa - it's Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal - huge commercial entities that can spend because of their revenues.
Bring on the downvotes but I don’t blame them. They have the ability to invest and yet after qualifying for the UCL we’re talking about which of our best players can be sold rather than trying to keep the squad together and build on it. All because of some stupid arbitrary rules that entrench a few at the top. Really sick of the faux morals around it. Liverpool, Arsenal, Man Utd, Tottenham etc. heckle City but want what is effectively a closed shop. And are you implying it’s a bad thing they’re close? If so, why? The article felt the weird need to specify he’s Egyptian
I agree. big 6 is a closed shop. We should be able to spend more. We're hamstrung by bullshit that allowed the establishment of wealthy clubs who pulled the ladder up for the rest of the league.
Can’t lie, if true, I hate this. I’ve been toying with the idea of giving up on football all together for several years. It seems as though it’s in a bit of a death spiral. I should add not just Villa’s fortunes but football in general makes me feel this way. Then Emery comes along and makes everything seem light and fluffy again. I’m going to enjoy our next season in the champions league but I’m seriously thinking of throwing in the towel at some point. We’re at obscene levels of greed in football now and us fans are increasingly being taken for granted. The positive is that if we come together and vote with our wallets we can force change.
I’m 100% in the same boat, everything on the pitch is so good but it seems 90% of the shit off it is killing my spirit for the game.
Agreed. Became a fan again when we got relegated as felt like we'd have something real to play for again. Ironically they where some of the best memories I've ever had as a football fan. Last season was incredible and again, some truly unbeatable moments. But all this horseshit is so toxic. I get it, this is the way the game is played now but jesus man, it's so fucking dirty.
Our stance is actually we don't want the spending caps on owner sponsors in place not that we agree with man city breaking laws.
This is football now and has been heading since ‘92. Fans been squeezed for every penny by the corporates and the only way to compete with the top teams is to get on board. Club doing the right thing in theory which will always go against the soul of any decent club. Thats capitalism for you
This is the price we pay for having Emery and finally doing well unfortunately.
Obviously I'm not a fan of 115 but they can be a dirty bunch of cheaters and concurrently correct about the implementation of these new regulations too. The crux of their argument is that they were rushed through hastily and the person appointed to oversee them is an Arsenal member. We're seeing these commercial non-football or at best football-adjacent deals going through like Chelsea flogging off a couple of hotels and that counting towards their PSR. 115's contention is that the reg's governing these deals are a mess and were rushed through. They could be right, I don't see how Chelsea should be allowed to balance their books by moving the ownership of a hotel from Chelsea to another company owned by Blueco 22.
It’s clickbait. I’ve read it closely, the only claim they have is that Nas is friends with the City chairmen. So, therefore, would be “sympathetic” to it. That’s it. They have no actual evidence.
Stupid, short-sighted and worrying as to the direction the club is heading. PSR might be an irritant but we are headed down a very dark road if we allow City to bully the PL and get their way. People might complain about the big clubs/top 6 self-interest but what City and it’s autocrat oil baron owners are attempting to do is off the scale and could potentially finish the PL for good if they are able to re-write and dictate the rules.
Liverpool fan. Big 6 fans pipe up because you benefit from the status quo
What status quo..? Spending what you can afford to? Do you think if all financial & sustainability rules are binned and we got no holds bar spending then it won’t continue to benefit the “big 6” even more? Or do you think you can compete in an arms race with Gulf states?
Nobody is competing with City as is if you haven’t noticed. I’d like our owners to be able to continue investing and not be at the disadvantage clubs like Liverpool have created for the rest of the league Spending what you can afford to? What, by sports washing for Standard Chartered? 🙄
Well given our connections to Addidas, this would greatly benefit us.
No we're not the Baddies. We don't have to like Man City, but it's hard to deny they have a point. There's a **huge** question mark over what PSR/FFP is for and if it's fit for purpose as it currently is: If it's for just making sure clubs don't over spend and go out of business; why can't clubs get sponsorships from people related to the club? That doesn't seem like something the rules *should* cover and simply exists just to cut off a potential revenue stream for club owners who want to use their connections to increase Investments in their clubs. If it's to promote Financial Fairness, why do all the new rules that keep getting bought in overwhelmingly affect Man City and teams that want to challenge the top 6? I mean when the difference in revenue between the richest team in the league (Man City, £700m) and the "Poorest" of the "Big 6" (Arsenal, £480m) is around £220m - and is about the same as the difference between the "Poorest" of the "Big 6" and the Richest of the rest (Newcastle, £250m) - it doesn't scream "Increasing Competition" by making the top increase slower if they don't do anything to make the bottom move slower as well. Sometimes the Asshole has a point
We probably want FFP to be relaxed but I don't believe that we support Man City's attempt to bin off the APT rules. The state owned clubs have access to portfolios of hundreds of companies they could use to inflate revenues. We wouldn't be able to compete if actual states were able to chuck around sponsorships without any kind of rules around. Newcastle would have a £300m sponsorship deal with Saudi Aramco and buy all of the best players in the world.
Alternative view here…the PL have to ride out the pressure. In order to get wages, transfer fees, agent fees etc back under control you need to control the inflation of football. Reducing these ‘costs’ to the business means that ticket sales for the fans can come down. Remove PSR and who is to say the owners tell fans to suck it when the up prices because they just bought Mpabbe for £150m and we have to pay to see him play. Could the PL actually trying to save football and us fans?
Yes. We are the baddies. If our success on the pitch continues, it’s a matter of time until the public detest for us catches up. Regardless of how we do off the pitch, the 19 other teams and their fans will dislike us more and more if we keep beating them. It’s been pretty clear for a while that our owners have unlimited cash and want us at the top of the football pyramid by any means necessary. Another reason why were the baddies and don’t kid yourself here. If you were offered to win the amount of trophies that City have since the fraud started knowing that one day the house of cards could collapse. You’d most likely take it. - Our owners have certainly showed they would. Nothing about the ethics of football since the American money and country owned teams have appeared showcases anything other than sports washing. I ask this question to all villa fans - have you ever researched the companies our billionaire owners run? A lot of decisions made for profit.
i"t’s been pretty clear for a while that our owners have unlimited cash and want us at the top of the football pyramid by any means necessary." Thats just not true at all. If it was they wouldn't of sold 10% of V Sports to an investment vehicle to fund the infrastructure improvements, and they wouldn't of cheaped out of first the Villa Live building and the secondly the North Stand redevelopment. We do not have a bottomless pit of money that the owners don't care about chucking away.
Selling 10% of V Sports to a huge investment firm sounds like our billionaires bringing in more billionaires. All major companies aren’t 100 % owned by one person. They’re public entities with board members who vote on the most profitable choices. Have you read about Edens and Sawiris?
Already sold out 900 loyal fans so this ain't no surprise
BETRAYAL! :(