As Aston Villa target qualification for the Champions League this season, UEFA have confirmed new formats for its elite club competition, the Europa League and Conference League.
The changes will come into effect from 2024/25 and the pivotal alteration in the reforms announced by the UEFA Executive Committee is the departure from the current format’s group stage system. The present Champions League group stage includes 32 participants divided into eight groups of four.
But from next season, 36 clubs will participate in the Champions League league phase (former group stage), giving four more sides the opportunity to compete against the best clubs in Europe. Those 36 clubs will participate in a single league competition in which all 36 competing clubs are ranked together.
However, there are many factors that go into what constitutes the allowable £105m loss, with certain costs such as investment into club infrastructure, community, the women’s team, and the academy – all allowable deductions. The key point to make first off is that the Premier League had sight of these accounts before the end of December as part of the League’s move to assess accounts early enough so as to be able to impose punishment in the same season in the event of breaches.
Everton were hit for a second financial period in succession for a breach, as too were Nottingham Forest, with both clubs facing independent commission hearings and potential points deductions, something that Everton have already been hit with this season for last year’s breach. Villa’s accounts were assessed and deemed not to be in breach of PSR, although it was likely that there wasn’t a whole lot of room for manoeuvre in that regard.
Villa will instead be looking to make sure their cloth is cut for the current financial year, which Villa have extended by an extra month to see it end on June 30, to ensure that next year’s PSR calculations in December don’t throw up any issues. The request to change the financial year-end was filed with Companies House on February 28, and the year-end will become June 30 for future years.
Villa’s loss of £119.6m for the season comes on the back of a small £400,000 profit that was recorded the year before, and the averaged two-year, pandemic-impacted 2019/20 and 2020/21 financial periods where the club lost some £68m before tax. Despite losses of around £187m, Villa are able to deduct significant sums from that loss, including as much as £56m from the impact of the pandemic across the two aggregated years.
