samatta

[Begley]

Started where they left off last season. Spunked loads of money, looked utter shite against 10 men, and the ref bailed them out....... Again. 

So one dubious win and the dicks are getting all excited. Some things never change down at the house of fish.....

Not sure who is getting excited. Yes, spent lots of money, I think it is fairly well proven that spending a lot of money is key to survival in the PL and trying to move up the table. Against Blades, we didn't have the final pass but we completely controlled the game. It was our first game of the season so getting 3 points, a clean sheet and giving 3 new players their debut is a good result. No illusions that this season won't be very difficult but the team is better than last season and we managed to stay up then. I think avoiding a relegation dogfight would be considered an excellent season.

Do the Villa just completely ignore FFP given that they've got away with doing so completely twice?

There is nothing to suggest that Villa ignore FFP. Yes they used a loophole to sell the ground to themselves (personally, I don't like the loophole but if the rules say u can do so then why not). The sale of the ground cleared FFP / P&S challenges from the Championship. Under Bruce we didn't spend that much as we sold a lot of players and spend the majority of budget on loan deals as opposed to building the club for the future. Again, I don't like this idea but that was the strategy. I think we could have had real problems if we did not get promoted when we did.
Once in the PL you have revenue of about 150m a year and for FFP u can lose 35m a year. Our expenses, excluding transfer spend is probably about 100m in the PL so that give 85m a year to spend on transfers and with amortisation that allows transfer fees of over 300m. The risk for Villa is that they can't do this every year and will need to tighten the belt a bit next summer or sell some players. But staying in the PL is key as that gives 150m of revenue every year so no breach of FFP

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They're CEO Purslow used to be on the FA didn't he?...

I don't believe he was in the FA but he was on the board that designed the FFP rules so yes, it is expected that he understands the rules and understands any loopholes that can be used.