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Villa need win tonight to balance finances

A win against Club Bruges tonight in the second leg of the last 16 will secure Aston Villa a place in the quarter-finals, having taken a 3-1 lead in the first leg in Belgium. Victory would not only take Villa a step closer to that first trophy under Unai Emery and give them confidence for the final few weeks of the season, it would give them a cash injection of £10.55million, plus £3.75million in gate receipts.

Figures published in Uefa’s annual European Club Finance and Investment Landscape report this week showed how Villa recorded losses of more than £80million during the 2023-24 season, which explains why any extra revenue would be gratefully received.

The losses are among the largest in Europe and had they not sold Douglas Luiz to Juventus for £42.35million on the final day of their accounting window, they would have breached the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules.

This season Villa are expected to be in breach of Uefa’s squad cost ratio (SCR) rules, which are regulations that permit a club to spend no more than 80 per cent of their revenues on wages, transfer fees and agent fees. The report states that Villa’s wage bill was the tenth-highest in Europe last season at £246million, which meant that they scraped under last season’s 90 per cent limit.

However, with Villa’s wages having increased and the cap reduced to 80 per cent, they are expected to be in breach for this campaign and are likely to face a fine, even with revenues going up considerably this season.

It is one of the reasons why qualifying for this competition again is so vital and despite sitting in eighth place in the Premier League they are only two points off fifth, the finishing position that should be enough to reach the Champions League next season.

They have seen the benefit of a good European run, with last season’s Europa Conference League journey boosting their profits and they have already generated £75million from their European campaign this season.

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