The AVFC FFP / PSR / SCR thread

[Czarnikjak]

2 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

Because we were buying Maatsen and Dobbin. It's pretty clear no? We had irons in the fire to get under PSR. Luiz got over the line for us. We had agreed mutual help with Everton and Chelsea players each way. 

As explained in my reply to Nick above, deals for Tim and Dobbin didn't have to be completed on the same day. We could have delayed selling Tim by few days if it wasn't needed. So we help Everton in 23/24 they help us in 24/25. (same story with Kellyman). 

[nick76]

5 minutes ago, Czarnikjak said:

Well, that is not a satisfactory explanation if you look at it logically. Nothing was stopping Villa and Chelsea transferring Maatsen in June and Kellyman in July. These transfers didn't have to happen on the same day.

Same with Tim and Dobbin. If Everton needed PSR profit in June, fine, sell Dobbin in June but don't finalise transaction for Tim till July.

If we are being honest with ourselves, most likely reason why Kellyman and Tim were sold in June was that they had to be sold before 23/24 period ended.

Sorry I can’t agree with you being so definitive.  I think my scenarios are more logical than yours, but I’m willing to entertain it could be either of our scenarios or somewhere in between.  Villa have shown they preplan everything and it seems the Dougie sale has been in the works for twelve months hence why Tielemans was brought in, I believe that deal sorted our PSR issue.  Maybe one of the Dobbin or Maatsen deal secured it or maybe not but I don’t think we needed both.  The Kellyman deal deal looks like we were helping Chelsea out in my opinion.

[CVByrne]

1 minute ago, Czarnikjak said:

As explained in my reply to Nick above, deals for Tim and Dobbin didn't have to be completed on the same day. We could have delayed selling Tim by few days if it wasn't needed. So we help Everton in 23/24 they help us in 24/25. (same story with Kellyman). 

Why does it matter? PSR ends after the end of this season and UEFAs squad cost rules are annual calendar. It's irrelevant. I'm sure for the cash flows doing the deals at same time was needed and best for both clubs. We can't be funded by our owners anymore because if they added capital it would dilute Atarios stake. We paid higher fee for Maatsen for better payment structure. 

Lots of factors. What years accounts they went into is low on the list. Plus any headroom in 23/24 would be helpful incase of any risk to restatement of accounts or something deducted not being allowed. 

[Czarnikjak]

4 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

Why does it matter? PSR ends after the end of this season and UEFAs squad cost rules are annual calendar. It's irrelevant. I'm sure for the cash flows doing the deals at same time was needed and best for both clubs. We can't be funded by our owners anymore because if they added capital it would dilute Atarios stake. We paid higher fee for Maatsen for better payment structure. 

Lots of factors. What years accounts they went into is low on the list. Plus any headroom in 23/24 would be helpful incase of any risk to restatement of accounts or something deducted not being allowed. 

It still will matter as new Premier League squad control rules look at last 3 seasons of profit from player sales, so it will remain relevant with new regulations as well. Regardless, we will find out who was right next March

Edited August 6 by Czarnikjak

[Czarnikjak]

9 minutes ago, nick76 said:

Sorry I can’t agree with you being so definitive.  I think my scenarios are more logical than yours, but I’m willing to entertain it could be either of our scenarios or somewhere in between.  Villa have shown they preplan everything and it seems the Dougie sale has been in the works for twelve months hence why Tielemans was brought in, I believe that deal sorted our PSR issue.  Maybe one of the Dobbin or Maatsen deal secured it or maybe not but I don’t think we needed both.  The Kellyman deal deal looks like we were helping Chelsea out in my opinion.

Agree to disagree, will find out in March what the exact situation was.

[ender4]

4 hours ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Was interesting though that the same expert mentioned how despite Newcastle announcing their kit deal with Adidas as being worth £40M it’s actually much less, which is apparently publicly accessible information

Similar to the Villa Adidas deal.  

Reported initially as £20m per season, but turns out it was a base £10m + £3m if we qualify for CL + £7m if we sold 300k shirts.   Which is fine for this season 24/25 to get to £20m. 
 

But next season it could quite well only be £10m.

[nick76]

3 hours ago, CVByrne said:

Was Stefan Borson at the end here. He's been miles off recently but he's in the ballpark anyway in terms of 100m in total (reduced costs, growing revenue, player sales). He's probably assumed the deals to end of June were all for 23/24 PSR (which I don't believe is true it was just Luiz needed) so on back of that thinks we've lots more to do. 

 

Following on from this, the Man Utd exceptional items need a bit more explaining by the powers that be why they have been allowed.

 

[nick76]

2 minutes ago, ender4 said:

Similar to the Villa Adidas deal.  

Reported initially as £20m per season, but turns out it was a base £10m + £3m if we qualify for CL + £7m if we sold 300k shirts.   Which is fine for this season 24/25 to get to £20m. 
 

But next season it could quite well only be £10m.

After we’ve won the quadruple? We’ll sell billions of shirts then  

[Frodo]

Haven't they bent the rules or turned a blind eye to Ratcliffe daul ownership with Utd & Nice both being in champions league .... yet our owners had to sell shares in one of there owned club so they wasn't a majority stake holder, so they could both play in the same European competition 

[david-avfc]

6 hours ago, nick76 said:

I’m not so sure it’s that high imo because I’m not sure we would’ve added Onana and Maatsen at those values if it was that high.  Along with Dobbin would be adding £20m amortisation per year and while us fans would’ve clamoured for signings we didn’t need a new left back and potentially the club could’ve argued with JJ, Rogers, Tielemans, Kamara (although injured), McGinn, Barrenechea and Donk we have enough midfielders. I maybe wrong but £55m seems high given the incoming business dealings we’ve done and we’ve likely not finished this summer.  I think the figures is materially lower than £55m.

Similar logic was being used after January - “we can’t be in FFP trouble because otherwise we wouldn’t have bought Rogers and Nedjelkovic”… and then a few months later we’re messing around in the final few days of the accounting period trying to sort out a cut price sale for Luiz and swapping around youth players. Unfortunately it’s all smoke and mirrors with PSR, ultimately we don’t have the full picture of the financial situation or what the long term plans are. I assumed villa were too well run to be in a situation that they found themselves in a few weeks ago, but then we all saw what happened. I still hope (and believe) villa officials do have a proper plan worked out but I really hope they’ve learned their lesson re relying on post-season transfers, it was close to being a total train wreck 

[david-avfc]

1 hour ago, Czarnikjak said:

Well, that is not a satisfactory explanation if you look at it logically. Nothing was stopping Villa and Chelsea transferring Maatsen in June and Kellyman in July. These transfers didn't have to happen on the same day.

Same with Tim and Dobbin. If Everton needed PSR profit in June, fine, sell Dobbin in June but don't finalise transaction for Tim till July.

If we are being honest with ourselves, most likely reason why Kellyman and Tim were sold in June was that they had to be sold before 23/24 period ended.

You are right but do we know what you’re describing wasn’t actually the case? They could have fully agreed a deal and contract for an official registration and contract start date of 1st July, there is no reason at all why that is not possible. Especially as it’s the off season anyway so it makes no difference who the player is registered with for 1 week.

[Rich192]

Maybe Alemany was right in his reasons for rejecting us. 

[skarroki]

Sorry I've gone back a few pages and can't see anything that I understand enough to get a grip of our current situation. 

So we just about snuck through the last gate with a £105million loss, now the accounts at the end of this season will account for 22/23, 23/24 and 24/25

Based on where we currently stand with confirmed official deals and the rough incomings we expect for this season, how much money do we still need to make from additional revenue / player sales in order to be okay at the end of June 2025?

[Czarnikjak]

5 hours ago, skarroki said:

Sorry I've gone back a few pages and can't see anything that I understand enough to get a grip of our current situation. 

So we just about snuck through the last gate with a £105million loss, now the accounts at the end of this season will account for 22/23, 23/24 and 24/25

Based on where we currently stand with confirmed official deals and the rough incomings we expect for this season, how much money do we still need to make from additional revenue / player sales in order to be okay at the end of June 2025?

Depends who you believe. General consensus is somewhere between £25m and £55m

[rodders129]

Someone is getting sold next summer. My guess is it could be Cash and Duran 

Edited August 10 by rodders129

[DakotaVilla]

We have loads of players who could be sold between now and next summer:

- Olsen, 

- Carlos (going), Cash, Digne, Moreno, Mings (1 year left in the summer)

- Donks, Buendia,

- Duran, Archer 

- PSR fodder youth talent 

if we don’t make champions league next year then it’s likely that we could lose a key player as well. 

[CVByrne]

8 hours ago, Czarnikjak said:

Depends who you believe. General consensus is somewhere between £25m and £55m

Agreed. As have stated before it's hard to predict right now as we're missing too much information especially in relation to remaining player sales and in comings and where we finish in PL and CL competitions.

I do think we've a few good young players ready to do swap deals on come June however. We also have a break glass if required with JJ

[DakotaVilla]

Even the top end of that estimate is relatively easy to do with the players that we have potentially ready to move on. 
 

The key is finishing fourth again. If we make champions league again all the sponsors etc are likely to scale up again etc and we start to meaningfully catch up with even the likes of Chelsea and spurs. 

[allani]

This post is prompted by some of the updates from Monchi on TalkSport raised on other threads but it seemed like my response to @Jas10 and others was best to put here.

First off - I am by no means suggesting that PSR wasn't the primary reason for selling Luiz, Diaby and some of our promising youngsters.  So there is more than an element of truth to what Monchi and others have been saying.  However, I do think that as a club we are going to ramp this rhetoric up to the max over the coming weeks and months as NS's assault on the fairness ramps up.

There's still plenty of people who think that PSR is a good thing and stops bad owners from bankrupting teams and / or causing Sheff Wed / Leeds style falls from grace due to reckless spending.  There's plenty to suggest that Everton spent well beyond their means, without a clear and cohesive plan and are in a worse financial position now as a club than they were when their owners took over and so their punishment for breaching the rules makes sense.  Similar to Forest - they spent a lot of money on players but I personally think you'd have to say that spending that money allowed them to progress as a club and I can't see how refusing to sell a player in June for a lowball offer and then sell the player 2 months later for £10m more is in anyway financial mismanagement or contrary to sustainable development of the business.

However, I think we are painting a very clear picture with everything we've done over the last year or two.  We're a big team who have invested wisely (lots of examples of players we have brought through the academy or bought for under £10m who are now key members of our team) and are buying young players with potential rather than hugely expensive players with a very limited lifespan.  It's almost impossible to argue that strategically our recruitment policy is not close to perfect for a team aiming to break into the Top Tier.  Meanwhile, we've also been very vocal about the way we've increased our revenues by £50m in 12 months (roughly 25%) and about our strategic plans to effectively DOUBLE our revenue streams within the next four years.  We've also been pretty high profile in our "big" new deals with adidas and Betano and our kit launch really seems to have captured the imagination of people both Villa fans and neutrals.  All of which is really demonstrating that we are a well run, highly professional club both on and off the field.  AND YET...

...despite doing everything that a brilliantly run club can we HAVE STILL had to sell two first team players and some young players in order to comply with PSR.  Yet we can clearly demonstrate that financially the club is well run - the value of the business has increased by a lot more than any operational losses shown on the balance sheet (not an unusual, dangerous or recless strategy).  So we can point to great success / improvement both on and off the pitch to demonstrate that we are being well run and have done nothing to increase the risk of us being an unsustainable or unviable business.  If a club that has done as well as we have are having to sell players whilst certain others can still go round buying anyone for £60m without a care in the world - how is that fair?  How can clubs like West Ham, Brighton, Palace, Everton, Forest, etc have any aspiration of emulating what we've done if all they can see is that we're forced to sell £100m of players as a result despite getting almost everything else right?  That's a theme that I think NS will be really leaning on to highlight why he thinks the system needs revising and why it is a barrier to opportunity.  I think we're also pretty well positioned to champion that battle because we're not state funded and our financial base is pretty clean (as much as any multi-billion enterprise is clean).  I also expect us to ramp up the message around us wanting to invest in and develop the area around Villa Park, etc and how those plans might be curtailed because we've had to focus on PSR instead.  It also wouldn't surprise me if we start putting out messages about how we wanted to expand the stadium (which PSR says should be a good thing to do) but that the short term PSR impact (through reduced gate receipts whilst work was undertaken) meant that we haven't been able to (which is bad for our future sustainability and profit).  

I suspect that the PL will raise some of the early transfer deals made (or adjusted) to assist with PSR compliance and attempt to make it more difficult to do that.  If they do then I think that might be the things that really shifts our attack on PSR (in its current guise) as NS will have a stack of evidence to prove that those deals were necessary not to improve the sustainability / viability of the clubs involved but purely to tick a completely meaningless box that doesn't do what it claims it does.

In the meantime, I do think the club will be directly (and indirectly) feeding the PSR line and highlighting again and again how that is a much bigger threat to our viability than the way that we are running our business.  It already seems to be gaining traction and I've seen a few neutral sources questioning why we (and Newcastle) have managed to reach the CL and been forced to sell (and / or prevented from signing players) whilst other teams can seemingly spend much more without consequence.

[Czarnikjak]

22 minutes ago, allani said:

This post is prompted by some of the updates from Monchi on TalkSport raised on other threads but it seemed like my response to @Jas10 and others was best to put here.

First off - I am by no means suggesting that PSR wasn't the primary reason for selling Luiz, Diaby and some of our promising youngsters.  So there is more than an element of truth to what Monchi and others have been saying.  However, I do think that as a club we are going to ramp this rhetoric up to the max over the coming weeks and months as NS's assault on the fairness ramps up.

There's still plenty of people who think that PSR is a good thing and stops bad owners from bankrupting teams and / or causing Sheff Wed / Leeds style falls from grace due to reckless spending.  There's plenty to suggest that Everton spent well beyond their means, without a clear and cohesive plan and are in a worse financial position now as a club than they were when their owners took over and so their punishment for breaching the rules makes sense.  Similar to Forest - they spent a lot of money on players but I personally think you'd have to say that spending that money allowed them to progress as a club and I can't see how refusing to sell a player in June for a lowball offer and then sell the player 2 months later for £10m more is in anyway financial mismanagement or contrary to sustainable development of the business.

However, I think we are painting a very clear picture with everything we've done over the last year or two.  We're a big team who have invested wisely (lots of examples of players we have brought through the academy or bought for under £10m who are now key members of our team) and are buying young players with potential rather than hugely expensive players with a very limited lifespan.  It's almost impossible to argue that strategically our recruitment policy is not close to perfect for a team aiming to break into the Top Tier.  Meanwhile, we've also been very vocal about the way we've increased our revenues by £50m in 12 months (roughly 25%) and about our strategic plans to effectively DOUBLE our revenue streams within the next four years.  We've also been pretty high profile in our "big" new deals with adidas and Betano and our kit launch really seems to have captured the imagination of people both Villa fans and neutrals.  All of which is really demonstrating that we are a well run, highly professional club both on and off the field.  AND YET...

...despite doing everything that a brilliantly run club can we HAVE STILL had to sell two first team players and some young players in order to comply with PSR.  Yet we can clearly demonstrate that financially the club is well run - the value of the business has increased by a lot more than any operational losses shown on the balance sheet (not an unusual, dangerous or recless strategy).  So we can point to great success / improvement both on and off the pitch to demonstrate that we are being well run and have done nothing to increase the risk of us being an unsustainable or unviable business.  If a club that has done as well as we have are having to sell players whilst certain others can still go round buying anyone for £60m without a care in the world - how is that fair?  How can clubs like West Ham, Brighton, Palace, Everton, Forest, etc have any aspiration of emulating what we've done if all they can see is that we're forced to sell £100m of players as a result despite getting almost everything else right?  That's a theme that I think NS will be really leaning on to highlight why he thinks the system needs revising and why it is a barrier to opportunity.  I think we're also pretty well positioned to champion that battle because we're not state funded and our financial base is pretty clean (as much as any multi-billion enterprise is clean).  I also expect us to ramp up the message around us wanting to invest in and develop the area around Villa Park, etc and how those plans might be curtailed because we've had to focus on PSR instead.  It also wouldn't surprise me if we start putting out messages about how we wanted to expand the stadium (which PSR says should be a good thing to do) but that the short term PSR impact (through reduced gate receipts whilst work was undertaken) meant that we haven't been able to (which is bad for our future sustainability and profit).  

I suspect that the PL will raise some of the early transfer deals made (or adjusted) to assist with PSR compliance and attempt to make it more difficult to do that.  If they do then I think that might be the things that really shifts our attack on PSR (in its current guise) as NS will have a stack of evidence to prove that those deals were necessary not to improve the sustainability / viability of the clubs involved but purely to tick a completely meaningless box that doesn't do what it claims it does.

In the meantime, I do think the club will be directly (and indirectly) feeding the PSR line and highlighting again and again how that is a much bigger threat to our viability than the way that we are running our business.  It already seems to be gaining traction and I've seen a few neutral sources questioning why we (and Newcastle) have managed to reach the CL and been forced to sell (and / or prevented from signing players) whilst other teams can seemingly spend much more without consequence.

I'm not sure you realised but PSR is going away. This is the last season of it.

Clubs already agreed in principle how the new financial controls will look. They will be broadly aligned with UEFA squad cost control rules. Effectively curtailing our spending even more.