Aston Villa · Financial analysis

Aston Villa's squad cost ratio: one summer of selling that carries the average

Aston Villa's squad cost ratio for the 1 March 2027 test comes out at about 74%, inside the 85% green threshold with roughly £57m of annual spending headroom. Measured before profit on player sales it is 96.9%, above the threshold even with £120m of merit above the fifteenth-place floor and European amounts in the revenue. £122.7m a year of averaged player-sale profit closes the gap, and three fifths of it comes from a single summer. Four players who had cost Villa £48.0m were sold for £253m in 2026 and produced £211m of profit. Reconstructed from NSWE UK Ltd's consolidated accounts and Appendix 2 of the Premier League Handbook.

By Arthur van de Laak17 September 2026Updated 1 November 2026 · View updates33 min read

Figures as of 31 October 2026, Orange Engine release V2CI · Latest figures · What the engine does not capture

Aston Villa sold four players for £253m in the summer of 2026. Together they had cost the club £48.0m, and between them they produced £210.5m of profit on sale, after the share of one sale owed to the player’s former club.

Villa’s squad costs £388.2m against £400.5m of the football revenue the rule counts, which is a ratio of 96.9% before any player trading, above the 85% threshold. That revenue includes £120.3m of merit above the fifteenth-place floor, European distribution and European home gate, and the three-year average of profit on player sales adds £122.7m a year. That takes the figure to 74.2%. The stress case, which sets every uncertain cost against the club at once and holds revenue at the central estimate, is 84.3%, just inside the line. Most of that averaged profit comes from the one summer described above, so the headroom rests on a Champions League place and a selling year that does not recur on demand.

• The squad cost is £388m: £219m of wages, £128m of amortisation, about £26m of agents’ fees and £15m of wages for two players on loan.
• The ratio has to be built from NSWE UK Ltd’s consolidated accounts rather than from either football company’s own, because one company records the income and another employs the players and holds their registrations.
• £219.6m of sale profit falls in the year to June 2027, against £34.6m the year before and £52.0m the year before that.
• The club’s lender, Goldman Sachs, holds security over Premier League central funds, broadcast income and the group’s other receivables, and the directors’ going-concern statement names increased player trading as the fallback if the league finish disappoints.

Taken together, the twenty clubs of this season’s Premier League come to 75.3% on the same basis; Aston Villa’s 74.2% is below that. The full table for every club in the series is at Premier League SCR 2026/27.

What the accounts say

The playing squad is not employed by the company that records the club’s income. Aston Villa Football Club Ltd (company 03375789) files £359.3m of turnover and £17.8m of wages. The players, their registrations and the Premier League share are in a sister company, Aston Villa FC Ltd (02502822), which files £214.2m of wages and £310.1m of turnover, £300.1m of it from group companies. NSWE UK Ltd (10176070) has no employees other than its directors and is the largest group to consolidate both companies’ financial statements; the ultimate parent is V Sports S.C.S. in Luxembourg. The ratio is therefore built from NSWE UK Ltd’s consolidated accounts.

NSWE UK Ltd files to 30 June. The year to 30 June 2025 followed a thirteen-month period, after a change of year end from May.

Turnover was £378.1m.

UEFA income of £70.2m came from a Champions League run to the quarter-finals, and it accounts for most of the £102m rise in turnover on the previous period.

Wages were £237.8m, and with £33.8m of social security the staff cost was £273.4m. The accounts give a headcount of 294 players, football management and coaches, 449 other staff and 480 part-time.

Amortisation of registrations was £99.7m, with a further £6.5m of impairment. Profit on player sales was £52.0m, against £64.8m in the thirteen-month period before, and £161.5m was invested in registrations in the year. The group made a loss before tax of £96.8m. Net current liabilities fell from £71.1m to £20.6m.

The transfer book is close to balanced: £148.9m owed to other clubs and £143.7m owed to Villa, so Villa are net debtors by £5.2m. The discount released on receivables, £10.3m, is larger than the discount charged on payables, £7.2m.

Agents’ fees paid in the FA’s reporting period were £38.4m.

The going-concern statement assumes that the club’s revolving facility remains available, and sets out what the directors would do if a lower league finish reduced income: increase player trading, which they describe as “not guaranteed”, or seek shareholder support that is “not yet committed”.

Rebuilding the ratio, before any selling

Wages, about £219m. The rule counts contract players and the head coach. NSWE UK Ltd files £273.4m of staff cost and groups 294 players, football management and coaches together, so the player share cannot be observed directly. This reconstruction currently uses 78 to 83% of the staff cost, carried forward through the 2025 window and the 2026 window, which removed six senior earners at once, Watkins, Konsa, Martínez, Tielemans, Digne and Bailey, against a younger and mostly cheaper intake.

A separate player-by-player salary build implies a materially lower share, but it covers fewer registered players than the filing does. The filed headcount cross-check cannot validate the range either, because it does not separate players from coaches and football management. The difference remains unresolved, and it is one of the largest uncertainties in the reconstruction.

Amortisation, £128.2m, built registration by registration from the filed net book value rather than rolled forward from the filed charge. Players signed since the last filed accounts are counted at the reported fee plus 12% for the League’s transfer levy and agents’ fees, which is how the rule defines what a registration costs, and that cost is spread over the contract, measured from the day the player was registered to the day it ends. A registration already in the filed book value whose contract was signed or extended on or after 12 December 2023 for more than five years is charged over five years, as Rule A.1.22(c) requires, which adds £1.6m, most of it Ian Maatsen’s six-year contract. The 2026 purchases add to the charge at once, which is the point returned to below.

Agents’ fees, about £25.9m, expensed, from the FA’s published figure of £38.4m.

Wages for players on loan, £15.0m. Villa pay the wages of Alejandro Garnacho and Aaron Wan-Bissaka and hold no registration for either, so the cost enters the numerator with no amortisation attached to it, which is how a loan works. That is a full-season figure on loans that began on 23 July and 21 August; on a day basis it would be about £1.1m lower.

Revenue the rule counts, £400.5m. The merit payment is taken at fourth place, being the best of last season’s finish, the three-year mean and the fifteenth-place floor. Commercial revenue counts merchandise at gross profit: Villa’s accounts give no merchandise figure, so the cost of the goods is estimated from the clubs that do, at £7.0m in a range of £2.9m to £15.4m, and taken off.

European revenue is taken under Rule A.1.29(e), which pays a reference amount rather than what a club earns. It is the highest of three figures: what the club recognised from that competition in the prior season, its three-year mean in that competition, and the estimated mean distribution for the round of 16 in that competition. Villa won the Europa League in 2025/26 and are in the Champions League for 2026/27, so the Europa League campaign does not count toward the Champions League figure. On this reconstruction the round-of-16 reference of £73.0m is the highest of the three and binds. It is reconstructed rather than published, with a range of £68m to £82m, and is the other large uncertainty here. The £400.5m also counts £3.4m for playing in the 2026 UEFA Super Cup, which the rule counts in the season it is played (Rule A.1.29(h)): UEFA paid each club €4m, and Villa lost the match to Paris Saint-Germain, so the winner’s €1m is not theirs. The €4m is converted at the European Central Bank’s rate for the day of the match.

The squad therefore costs £388.2m, made up of £219.1m of wages, £128.2m of amortisation, £25.9m of agents’ fees and £15.0m of loan wages, each rounded separately, against £400.5m of revenue. That is 96.9% before any player trading, 11.9 points the wrong side of the threshold.

How much of the revenue rests on the rule’s own bases

Villa earned the merit by finishing fourth, £41.4m more than the fifteenth-place floor would pay, and the European amounts follow from reaching the Champions League. Measured at the floor and with no European money, the same cost base would produce 138.5% instead of 96.9%, which is 41.6 points. All other revenue stays fixed, so this compares the rule’s bases and is not a forecast. Both parts have to be earned again each season.

What player trading does to it

The rule admits profit on player sales into the denominator: the profit or loss on sales in the six most recent transfer windows, divided by three (Rules A.1.13 and A.1.53). For the March 2027 test that period starts on 2 February 2024, so it takes in the end of Villa’s thirteen-month period to June 2024. At Villa that average is carrying the club, and one year is carrying the average.

£388.2m divided by £400.5m plus £122.7m gives 74.2%. The 2027 year is 60% of the pool the average is taken over.

Malen and Barrenechea sit in the year to June 2026 because that is when their moves became final: Malen’s transfer completed in May, and Barrenechea’s loan turned into an obligation to buy in October 2025. The dates on which Italian and Portuguese windows allowed them to be registered, in June and July 2026, do not decide the year.

Why one summer is so large

Profit on a sale is the proceeds less the registration’s remaining book value, not the proceeds less the original fee. Book value is what remains of the registration’s cost, which the rule counts as the fee plus 12%. Two further amounts come off: an allowance of 5% for the direct costs of the sale, and any share of the profit owed to a former club under a sell-on clause. A club that bought cheaply years ago, or for nothing, converts almost the whole price into profit, and four sales did that at once.

Rogers cost an initial £8m from Middlesbrough in 2024 and was sold to Chelsea for £117m two and a half years later, with £5.7m still on the books. Not all of the profit is Villa’s to keep. Middlesbrough kept a clause entitling them to 20% of any future profit, measured against a £15.5m purchase price and reported at £20.3m, so Villa’s profit is £85.5m rather than the £105.8m the sale would otherwise produce. The Rogers chain follows the same money through both clubs.

Konsa and Watkins were both bought from Brentford, in 2019 and 2020. Konsa had been written off entirely by the time he left for Arsenal at a base fee of £51m. Watkins had not: when a contract is extended, the remaining book value is spread over the new, longer term, and his extension in October 2023, to 2028, left £4.4m on the books, of the £28.0m fee plus 12%, when he went to Al Hilal for £50m. Tielemans is the simplest case: he arrived on a free transfer from Leicester in 2023, so he carried no book value at all, and nearly the whole of his £35m fee from Manchester United became profit. Each row is rounded separately, so the profits sum to £210.6m against the exact total of £210.5m.

The purchasing side of the same window runs on a different clock. Nicolas Jackson at a base fee of £47.5m, Johan Manzambi at £52m and Ibrahim Mbaye at £47m each create an amortisation charge over several seasons. For the Premier League calculation that charge is capped at a five-year period, because all three were signed after 12 December 2023. A sale lands its profit at once, while a purchase spreads its cost, and the difference between those timings is where Villa’s headroom comes from and where it will go.

When the 2027 year leaves the three-year average, the profit it contributes goes with it. On the present cost base, with nothing to replace it, the figure moves back toward the 96.9% measured before any trading.

The ratio over time

The same formula for each period, with the figure before player trading beside it. The historical periods use filed turnover; the 2026/27 row uses the revenue the rule counts. The period to June 2024 is thirteen months and is not annualised.

How the filed periods are built. Revenue and amortisation are read from each period’s filed accounts. Wages are 78 to 83% of each period’s filed staff cost, the same share used for 2026/27, and each period’s agents’ fees are the FA’s published figure for the reporting period that overlaps most of it. The SCR column adds the three-year average of sale profit, as the rule does.

For three periods Villa’s squad cost ran at 112 to 119% of revenue before player trading, and the same periods led to the 2024 breach of UEFA’s rules.

Under the old profitability rules Villa also booked gains on selling assets within the group. Aston Villa Ltd’s accounts for the year to June 2025 show a £111.0m profit on disposal of subsidiaries, £75.0m on the women’s club and £36.0m on a subsidiary holding the warehouse operating rights, both sold to NSWE Holding Ltd, and a profit for the year of £110.9m. Neither figure reaches this reconstruction. A sale from one group company to another is eliminated when the group’s accounts are consolidated, and NSWE UK Ltd’s consolidated accounts are where the ratio is built.

The year to June 2025 brought £102m of revenue growth, £70m of it from the Champions League, and took the figure before trading to about 91%. That was the first period in which the ratio on the rule’s basis came inside the line, at about 81%. In the three periods before it, the rule’s figure sat at about 93 to 101%, even with the profits from Grealish’s and Luiz’s sales in the three-year average. Luiz’s sale in June 2024, Durán’s in the following year, and now Rogers’s, have each put a large profit into the average in turn, and that, with the Champions League, is what holds the 2026/27 figure at 74.2%.

UEFA is a second test

Villa are in the Champions League, so UEFA’s own squad cost rule applies as well, at 70% on a calendar-year basis, a tighter line than the League’s 85%.

The club has been sanctioned twice. In July 2025 it agreed a settlement with UEFA with a fine of €11m: €5m for breaching the football earnings rule and €6m for exceeding the squad cost limit, then 80%, in 2024. Separately, in June 2026 it was fined €22.5m for a significant breach of the squad cost rule in 2025, the first year at 70%, of which €15m is reported as conditional on the ratio continuing to fall in 2026. It cannot add players to its UEFA List A for 2026/27 without a positive transfer balance.

We do not publish a figure for calendar 2026. That year straddles two financial years, and the accounts for the year to June 2026 are not due until 31 March 2027.

The financing structure

Villa’s borrowing is secured across a number of group companies and works as one structure. Goldman Sachs provides a £100m revolving facility to June 2029, with £77.0m drawn, and a £32.5m factored receivable loan agreement running to July 2027, both at SONIA plus 2.375%. Interest payable rose from £6.5m in the preceding thirteen-month period to £20.0m in the year to 30 June 2025.

The security package was registered in four successive waves, beginning on 22 to 26 November 2024, then on 11 April 2025, 30 October 2025 and 30 July 2026, against group companies including NSWE UK Ltd, NSWE Sports Ltd, Aston Villa Ltd, Aston Villa FC Ltd, Aston Villa Football Club Ltd and NSWE Stadium Ltd, in favour of Kroll Trustee Services as security trustee, with Goldman Sachs International as arranger. The charges assign Premier League central funds, broadcast income, any parachute payments and the group’s other receivables, and cover Villa Park and the academy. It is the same arranger, agent and trustee as Crystal Palace’s £150m facility, at a club playing in the Champions League.

Their lender holds security over money owed to the group, including Premier League central distributions and broadcast income.

What the headroom rests on

For anyone assessing Villa’s position, whether an agent pricing a player, a lender sizing a facility or a sporting director judging what the club can absorb, the two supports behave differently.

• Merit above the floor and European amounts, 41.6 points, reflect a fourth-place finish and a Champions League place. They are renewable, but they have to be earned again each season, and both can fall away together.
• The effect of player-sale profits, 22.7 points, is an average over three years, and 60% of it is the 2026 summer. It leaves the average in time, and a year like it depends on having players the market values far above their book value.
• The cost base does not fall when either support does. The 2026 purchases carry amortisation for several seasons, so the numerator is committed while the denominator is not.

What this doesn’t say

• That Villa’s ratio is exactly 74.2%. The published range is 68.8 to 77.0%, conditional on the current 78 to 83% player-share assumption and the reconstructed Champions League reference amount of £73m within a range of £68m to £82m. The filed headcount cross-check cannot validate the player-share range, because the filed employment category combines players with coaches and football management.
• That the club is in difficulty. Villa have substantial revenue, valuable registrations, committed external facilities and wealthy owners. The position has less margin for a disappointing season than 74.2% suggests, which is a different statement.
• That either support is dispensable. Removing the European revenue or the sale profit narrows the headroom materially, and removing both changes the picture.
• That head-coach costs are fully captured. The head coach is a relevant person under the rule, and no separate head-coach cost has been added, because the wage figure is a share of the filed staff-cost line.
• Where Villa stand on UEFA’s test for 2026. We do not estimate it, and the settlement’s own targets govern what happens next rather than the standard thresholds.

A sale lands its profit in one year and a purchase spreads its cost over several seasons. Villa’s 2026 summer did both at once, which is why the ratio looks comfortable now and why the figure before trading is the one to hold in mind.