Unai Emery has often been praised for his work at Aston Villa, and rightly so. He has consistently qualified for Europe, won silverware, and done so while playing an attractive brand of football. What has often been lauded, though, is Emery’s ability to construct a competitive side without the resources of the teams around him.

There have always been financial haves and have-nots in the Premier League, but there always existed the opportunity to upset the traditional order of things — see Sheikh Mansour and Roman Abramovich’s respective takeovers of Manchester City and Chelsea for reference. What is particularly galling for Aston Villa fans is that regulations in recent years have firmly slammed the door shut on anyone else being able to sustain a challenge.

The impacts of first Financial Fair Play (FFP) and then Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) have severely handicapped Villa’s ability to come close to spending what the likes of Liverpool, Chelsea, or Arsenal routinely do. A potential sugar daddy or nation-state ownership could allow a team to circumvent this — Newcastle, with PIF investment, are the best example here — but a revenue ratio means Villa have no realistic short-term means of closing the gap. The rankings from the 2026 Deloitte Money League show the gulf clearly, with Liverpool’s revenue nearly double that of Villa’s.

The Deloitte Money League’s 2026 Premier League revenues

The revenue of a club will effectively cap squad costs under the new system, and it isn’t simple for Villa to outgrow the competition here. Despite being a well-supported and historic club, Villa do not yet have the global reach to capitalise commercially the way their peers do. Additionally, Birmingham isn’t nearly as affluent as London or Manchester, meaning the club simply can’t charge the same for tickets and merchandising locally — these are the sort of forces working against Villa that can’t be changed overnight. What it does mean is that Villa are forced into tough decisions around their squad, and often have to be creative in their transfer activity.

A case in point was Morgan Rogers leaving Aston Villa for Chelsea this summer for £117m — roughly £93m of pure profit on the books. Days later, Alejandro Garnacho arrived from Chelsea in the opposite direction. On paper, it looks like a straightforward trade, with Chelsea paying the premium for Rogers but Villa getting a replacement as part of the deal. Look closer at how the Garnacho deal is actually structured, though — an initial loan, with a £42.5m obligation to buy that only triggers next season — and it starts looking like an accounting decision.

Villa didn’t need a new winger on that specific timeline. They needed the Rogers profit to stay clear of a swap UEFA or the Premier League might otherwise treat as one connected transaction. This is what competing in the Premier League’s financial system actually looks like for a club like Aston Villa.

Aston Villa’s Holte End (Photo by Lex.DK CC)

This isn’t new for Villa, and it’s a minor miracle that Emery has managed to deliver the success he has in recent years. Back in 2023, Villa were forced to sell Douglas Luiz, Moussa Diaby, Tim Iroegbunam, and Omari Kellyman inside weeks to stay under PSR’s £105m three-year loss cap, despite Champions League qualification that same summer. This is the third or fourth time in three years Villa have had to structure business around a compliance deadline rather than football need.

To complicate things further, Villa have had to cope with different rules domestically versus in Europe, and have been assessed differently under both. Villa’s £114m in intra-group sales (the women’s team, the Warehouse training facility) were accepted as legitimate revenue by the Premier League, but rejected by UEFA. The result: Villa are compliant at home and still paying European fines on the same set of accounts. Financial sustainability, it seems, means two different things depending on which jurisdiction is doing the judging.

Nassef Sawiris, current chairman and co-owner of Aston Villa, made his feelings abundantly clear in an interview with the FT:

“Some of the rules have actually resulted in cementing the status quo more than creating upward mobility and fluidity in the sport”

“It’s more about creating paper profits, not real profits. It becomes a financial game, not a sporting game.”

What is unfair is that the established ‘Big Six’ built their financial ceilings over decades of accumulated revenue, sponsorship, and Champions League history. Villa broke into the top four on merit, and are now discovering that finishing there doesn’t come with the financial freedom to stay there. Every summer becomes a compliance exercise instead of a chance to build.

Villa can keep doing everything right — qualify for Europe, sell smart, structure deals cleverly — and still never accumulate the kind of financial base the ‘Big Six’ built before these rules existed. That’s not a flaw in how Villa are run. It’s the system working against them.