Despite yesterday’s win against Fulham, it’s not been the best of starts to the season for Aston Villa, who failed to win any of their first five league games, while scoring just one goal in that time.
In addition, they crashed out of the EFL Cup at the first time of asking, having been defeated by Brentford on penalties.
Monchi Departure
The mood around Villa Park was not improved when it was announced that Monchi, the president of football operations, and more importantly a close confidant of head coach Unai Emery, would be leaving the club.
The reasons for the departure of this key figure are not known, with some saying that there were personal factors behind Monchi’s decision to return to Spain, but it is another sign of Villa’s issues off the pitch.
Monchi himself had hinted at some frustration with the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR), when he had previously listed compliance with these rules as the most important of his four objectives, “First, to find a solution for the PSR. Second, to have a younger squad. Three, to have a deeper squad. And the fourth is to be aligned with what Unai wants.”
Summer Signings
Either way, Villa were the one Premier League club whose transfer window this summer was very clearly impacted by PSR, as noted by manager Unai Emery, “We cannot avoid that the summer has been challenging, because the financial rules were conditioning our investment and our squad.”
This meant that their only significant signing was Evann Guessand from Nice, as the club had to make do with the cheap acquisitions of Yasin Ozcan from Kasimpasa and Marco Bizot from Brest, the loan signings of Jadon Sancho and Harvey Elliott and the free transfer of Victor Lindelöf from Manchester United.
As a result, Villa actually had the lowest gross spend in the top flight this summer with just £42m, which was miles below the likes of Liverpool £459m, Chelsea £331m and Arsenal £291m.
For even more perspective, this was also a lot less than the three promoted clubs: Sunderland £193m, Burnley £135m and Leeds United £116m.
Summer Sales
Instead, the clear focus this summer was on selling players – or at the very least getting them off the payroll. The club’s director of football operations, Damian Vidagany had already warned that it would be a “difficult” summer,
Villa’s financial challenges directly led to the sale of Jacob Ramsey to Newcastle United for £39m, which was a “pure profit” deal, as he is an Academy product.
