The cost of compliance: Aston Villa selling the women's team shows up the PSR farce
Sale of Aston Villa Women doesn't make Aston Villa profitable or sustainable, just adherent with the rules
Money has always played its part in sport but the extent to which financial gossip has come to define football discourse is a cultural tragedy.
Aston Villa were compliant in time for the June 30th Premier League profit and sustainability rules (PSR) deadline, meaning they didn’t exceed allowable loses for the three year period covering 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25.
But Villa achieved compliance by agreeing the partial sale of the club’s women’s team, a deal that values Aston Villa Women at around £55m and absolved Villa of the need to sell players on the cheap until this time next year.
There’s no good way for a Premier League club to sell its Women’s Super League team.
A club that sells its women’s team to its parent company or a sister company is playing at creative accountancy in order to rectify its financial failings, at least those defined by arbitrary rules.
Some supporters will be fine with that, others more uncomfortable, but none of us should even have to think about any of this.
A club that sells its women’s team to someone else is inviting a multitude of unintended consequences.
Whatever the stated intentions at the outset, uncoupling part of the business means it’s not part of the business anymore. It can be changed. It can be sold again, to anyone, and thereafter anything can happen.
Football is littered with cautionary tales of women’s teams or stadiums being sold and their separation from parent clubs is risky by definition.
By selling a stake in Aston Villa Women to outside investors and all or part of what’s left to V Sports, Villa are taking a little from Column A and a little from Column B and hoping it’ll turn out fine.
In all likelihood, it will. Entertaining the idea that Villa’s investors neglect the women’s team or sell it to its detriment years from now is negative in the extreme but the fact that it’s possible and Villa wouldn’t be in control of the situation is far from ideal in principle alone.
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That the singular driving force behind the sale of the women’s team is compliance with PSR is a shameful indictment of the Premier League’s financial regulatory framework.
As supporters we can get drawn into the details but take a step back and consider the simplified version.
Villa can make allowable losses of £105m in any rolling three-year period and have chosen to sell Aston Villa Women rather than being forced into unwanted player sales at low fees in the name of hitting a June 30th deadline that doesn’t match up with the timing of the transfer window.
That’s absurd. It doesn’t take an opponent of financial regulation in football to say so.
It’s possible to be uncomfortable with Villa’s decision without condemning it. I’d rather the women’s team be wholly owned by the club and operate as such but I don’t want Villa to sell Ollie Watkins or Morgan Rogers or Youri Tielemans in rushed, cut-price transfer deals in the middle of the window.
We can’t have it both ways because of rules supposedly designed to protect clubs from themselves and it’s increasingly difficult to understand how Villa, broadly progressing well under the management of Unai Emery, benefit from being compliant in any way other than compliance itself.
Clubs need financial regulation. We have more than 150 years of football history to prove that much. If we’re not going to regulate in the name of competitive parity, said regulation should be squarely focused on sustainability.
Profit and sustainability rules aren’t about sustainability. Unwillingly selling top players under their market value is not sustainability. Unhooking the women’s team and floating it off into the ether is not sustainability.
None of this is sustainability. PSR is damaging football clubs and the sooner its impending abolition is confirmed the better.
When that happens, Villa will be expected to comply with something akin to UEFA’s squad cost ratio (SCR) rules, which require clubs to operate below a defined percentage in terms of player wages versus revenue.
They’re not compliant now. As a Europa League team, player sales are still likely and they’ll be difficult to stomach but at least SCR reflects the health of the business in a meaningful way and gives clubs the whole transfer window to sell before the same deadline as anyone else.
Selling the women’s team will have no effect on UEFA’s calculation. There’s a reason for that.