Villa Blogsville

Did Aston Villa Really Gamble Given The Figures?

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DeanoVilla looks at the figures and makes an educated guess on others to see whether the standard line that ‘Aston Villa gambled’ our future this year would actually stand up to any sensible questioning.

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I’ve just been going through the full list of players signed and sold by Dr Tony Xia since he took over to try and put some kind of explanation around why things have gone so wrong.

The line we keep being spun is that Xia ‘invested heavily’ and ‘gambled’…. yet did he really?

He’s a full list of players signed and sold…the fee’s I believe are fairly accurate. The wages, I’ve guessed at a lot of them, but I’d be surprised if most of them were far off the truth.

Incoming
Transfer Spend
Estimated Wage
Tommy Elphick
£3,000,000
£30,000
Pierluigi Gollini
£4,000,000
£20,000
Aaron Tshibola
£5,000,000
£20,000
Ross McCormack
£12,000,000
£40,000
James Chester
£8,000,000
£30,000
Mile Jedinak
£4,000,000
£50,000
Ritchie De Laet
£2,000,000
£25,000
Jonathan Kodjia
£15,000,000
£35,000
Albert Adomah
£0
£30,000
Henri Lansbury
£2,750,000
£40,000
James Bree
£3,000,000
£23,000
Birkir Bjarnason
£2,500,000
£25,000
Conor Hourihane
£2,000,000
£35,000
Neil Taylor
£2,000,000
£35,000
Scott Hogan
£11,000,000
£30,000
John Terry
£0
£60,000
Ahmed Elmohamady
£1,000,000
£30,000
Chris Samba
£0
£15,000
Glenn Whelan
£2,000,000
£30,000
Total:
£79,250,000
£598,000
1
Outgoings
Transfer Recouped
Wage Saved
Kieran Richardson
£0
£50,000
Charles N’Zogbia
£0
£65,000
Jose Angel Crespo
£1,000,000
£20,000
Brad Guzan
£0
£40,000
Idrissa Gana Gueye
£7,100,000
£40,000
Ciaran Clark
£5,000,000
£25,000
Scott Sinclair
£3,500,000
£35,000
Joe Bennett
£0
£20,000
Jores Okore
£1,000,000
£35,000
Joleon Lescott
£0
£50,000
Adama Traore
£0
£40,000
Rudy Gestede
£2,000,000
£30,000
Ashley Westwood
£5,000,000
£25,000
Jordan Ayew
£7,000,000
£35,000
Libor Kozak
£0
£25,000
Carlos Sanchez
£3,000,000
£30,000
Jordan Veretout
£7,000,000
£35,000
Nathan Baker
£1,000,000
£25,000
Leandro Bacuna
£1,000,000
£20,000
Jordan Amavi
£6,000,000
£30,000
Pierluigi Gollini
£3,700,000
£20,000
Carles Gil
£2,000,000
£20,000
Gabby Agbonlahor
£0
£45,000
John Terry
£0
£60,000
Total:
£24,700,000
£820,000

NB – issues over Amavi/Sanchez fees over to factoring arrangements.

So that’s roughly £80 million spent and £56 million recouped, so a net spend of £23 million or £11.5million per year.

The wages (I’ve not included the loan signings as they’ve now all left) have actually gone DOWN, reducing the wage bill by about £220,000 per week or £11 million per year!!!

Now my figures may be slightly off as like I say I’ve estimated a lot of the wages, but I can’t be off by £11 million surely, so the crux of the matter is wages will have gone down.

Now it’s my understanding that we have so far received approx £70-£75 million in parachute payment (with one further payment of £15 million to come).

So…if the NET spend is £25 million, and the wages have gone DOWN, and we’ve received £70-75 million in parachute money, plus TV deals and all the other income…then how the hell are we losing so much money each month? Has Tony actually put any of his own money in at all?!?

Something just doesn’t add up for me.

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NB – last accounts had wages down to circa £39million per annum – a considerably drop from £69+million in previous years and the obvious caveat is we won’t have recouped all those transfer fees just yet, just as we won’t have paid off all incoming transfer fees.

Wages will again reduce with the players that have left us this summer and an educated guess given our losses and cash flow is that money has been incoming from the owner – but funding monthly expenditure is not ‘bankrolling’ a final stab at promotion back to the Premier League and that’s how it’s being painted.

But as Villa fans are becoming accustomed to this summer, there are more questions than answers with every passing day.

Do The Numbers Stack Up Forum Thread – usual caveats apply.

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