Proud History, Bright Future.

A tag line, PR spin, just a bit of marketing guff perhaps, but it’s a simple little sentence that strikes the right chord with most Villa fans.  I’ve always liked it and it sums up Aston Villa at the moment as well as any four words possibly could.  I’m really talking about Aston Villa under the management of Martin O’Neill and, more specifically, the ownership of Randy Lerner.

When it comes to team management it’s frequently speculated that Martin O’Neill has put Villa on a strong footing to counter any new rules imposed on clubs surrounding the nationality of players by creating the most English-centric team in the Premiership.  I’m not sure this was his motivation, or even a consideration for that matter, and the last time I looked, the proposed rule changes wouldn’t have a massive effect on any of the EPL clubs, but it still leaves a satisfying feeling that that might be the case.

On the financial front, there can be few credible complaints from Villa fans about an owner who has invested both on and off the pitch to levels not seen at Villa Park before, but equally hasn’t gone crazy and saddled the club with unmanageable levels of debt.

Thanks to Pitch Invasion I was just reading about UEFA’s intentions to deal with clubs living beyond their means.  We’ve all recently seen the terrible levels of debt hanging around the necks of Liverpool and Man Utd. Chelsea’s debt may have been turned into shares by Abramovich, but the club are still losing more than £40m per season. Portsmouth are in a perilous state and the situation there should be watched very carefully.

According to UEFA’s survey of more than 650 clubs throughout Europe, more than half are consistently losing money and 20% are  “making huge losses, spending 120 per cent of their revenue every year.”  This cannot continue and UEFA are quite right to intervene.

And if you think that a sugar daddy owner like Citeh’s Sheikh Mansour is the answer, think again. UEFA are not about to let an owner send football salaries into spiraling levels of inflation by pumping their own money through the club as their play thing.

To be clear, no one is trying to stamp out debt completely, not all debt is a bad thing, but the debts have to be manageable. If servicing a debt from 2012 onward takes the club into loss making territory they’ll find themselves excluded from European competition. The Telegraph article closes with a nice summary:-

How will the rules work?

What are the new regulations?
From the 2012-13 season, clubs will have to consistently break even – spending only what they earn – if they want to compete in European competition.

Does that mean they can’t have debts?
No, but the debt has to be affordable. If the interest on the debt means that the club or its holding company make a loss, they would fall foul of the rules. Clubs will still be able to borrow to fund new stadiums and youth academies.

What about wealthy owners?
It will be harder for them to subsidise transfer spending and player wages from their own pocket.

Which English clubs will be affected?
Chelsea and Manchester City, as they both need their owners to pay the players. Manchester United will be hit if their debts stay high. In fact, the whole Premier League could be hit: 14 of the 20 clubs made a loss in 2008.

I doubt that Randy Lerner saw this coming any more than I believe Martin O’Neill has anticipated any type of restriction on foreign players, but once again I’m feeling that warm glow that our owner is steering the good ship Aston Villa on the right course, sticking well away from those jagged rocks.

I think our club is rightly the envy of many a football fan for the way it’s run and set up for the future and it seems to me that there could be some major changes to football in the coming years that will see our club move into a very strong, viable position.

Proud History, Bright Future indeed.