The season overall

[Keeno]

Financially, how cooked are we now?

Not as cooked as last year as we’ve now got the UCL money hitting the books. We’ve got obvious players to move on first before touching anyone in the first XI.

It’s more the type of incoming signing will probably be different to if we’d secured CL.

[ChicagoLion]

Financially, how cooked are we now?

It’s hard to say but Matt Law suggested that we are still in PSR danger and that was before not qualifying for CL. With or wage bill 94% of revenue we can expect a lot of transfer dealing before 30June and thereafter.

Cheers. Must admit the finance side baffles me

The thing is we only get to see once a year and the accounts are released several months after the year end.
So a lot of guess work.

[john e]

There’s 2 separate viewpoints now in supporting a premier league team with aspirations
One is financial other is winning a trophy

Take the Europa league final, to Man United it was all about qualifying for the Champions League because that puts you in a fantastic financial position to attract players and balance the books, etc, plus the fact they’ve won plenty of trophies, even in the last few years
To Spurs it was about winning a trophy for the first time in 17 years, yes the Champions League was a massive bonus but it was about the trophy first

I’m getting old now I have not seen my team win a trophy for 30 years,
Worse than that two of my four kids have never seen as win anything at all, and the other two were too young to remember really

So for me it’s all about winning something,
I look this season at Palace, Newcastle and now Tottenham and I’m jealous that they’ve had those moments
Id swap any of those for Champions League place

I’d actually take winning the conference league over being in the Champions League, and I know financially it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t support Villa because it’s a financial business I want to see Villa lift the trophy before it’s too late for me
So this season is a disappointment because we’ve knocked on the door yet again but come up short

Being in the Europa league is probably not as big a disappointment to me as it is for others including my own kids
Because it offers a better opportunity to actually win it, that’s the only thing that matters to me
Spurs, got a 17 year old monkey off their back Ours is nearly double that which is ridiculous really

100 million Champions League money or a trophy is a no brainer for me
Although I realise that the two can’t be totally unrelated, but we’ve been better over the last two or three years than  Palace and Spurs maybe even Newcastle with or without finances they’ve put a trophy in the cabinet we’re still waiting

That’s why I’m disheartened, not because we didn’t make Champions League

(I think this is an age related post I quite understand that younger supporters feel differently)

[Ads]

It's been a good season.

I'm really disappointed we didn't make the CL. Not really from a sales perspective, as we have to wheel and deal regardless. That's just our fate. But prestige, as mentioned elsewhere.

I'm proud of what we're becoming, which is indexed to that being a transition still- we're not at the summit of our ambitions yet.

4th and semi finals of the Conference League
6th on goal difference and semi finals of the FA Cup and QF of the CL. I think we were the best English side in it and PSG probably agree.

I want a trophy and maybe the universe has heard all our bitter thoughts from April going back up the M40 and conspired for this; the Europa League.

We need our 21st trophy. We need Champions League football. My better half has been badgering for Istanbul. This could be our Fulham/2018 moment.

Could. A loaded word. We were never really going to win the Champions League and the fact I'd not got anything booked for next Saturday suggests so. But what if we hadn't shipped the 3rd? "We'd have done Arsenal" was the collective and totally untestable belief in the pub yesterday. Maybe. Then what? Day dreaming again.

Would we have beat Man City? The way they played...who knows. We'd have definitely had more of the ball and created more than Palace. One for the birds.

17 minutes from the end of a season, we score. I think we avoid defeat. But we'll never know. The free kick against Bournemouth, some Stripey nobody pulling off one the most ridiculous saves you've ever seen. Watkins missing a sitter at Arsenal. Switching off against Brighton and Palace at home. And West Ham! You've forgot that one. That goal at Man City. Two corners at Liverpool. All of it bad, ignoring the 19 wins- all down to that 1 moment. We came so close. Morgan Rogers out of nowhere, puts us in front.

57 games and a lot of frustration, but totally outweighed by a lot of enjoyment.

[Tony Daleys Shorts]

Two really good posts john e and Ads, sums it up perfectly. Especially for us knocking on a bit.

[paul_e]

Financially, how cooked are we now?

It’s hard to say but Matt Law suggested that we are still in PSR danger and that was before not qualifying for CL. With or wage bill 94% of revenue we can expect a lot of transfer dealing before 30June and thereafter.

Cheers. Must admit the finance side baffles me

The thing is we only get to see once a year and the accounts are released several months after the year end.
So a lot of guess work.

Let's not forget the 94% isn't a real thing because we extended our accounting period to 13 months, meaning 86% is a more accurate base to start from.

Since then our revenue has increased by about £100m.

If we were running as close as some are suggesting I doubt we'd have added both Rashford and Asensio.

[frank black]

I’m agreeing with John e on this.

Massively disappointed about our inability to turn up for the big games and a little angry and annoyed with Unai. Don’t care if I sound fickle or entitled.

With it being highly likely we’ll be trimming the wage bill, it’s also possible we won’t go from strength to strength either… praying for a Monchi miracle

[RamboandBruno]

John and Ads, two very good posts and agree with both.
Id only add, Unai won’t be here for ever so it feels like if we are going to win something its going to need to be with him

[Grande Pablo]

Agreed - we’ve thrown so many points away for yesterday to become a dead rubber.  Whilst the decision is of course criminal & handled well by the club, we only have ourselves to blame.

Contextually we never thought Emi would go.  Now it looks like he is the cash raised will go some way to plugging the funding gap, granted we need to go out & sign at least 1 replacement.

[ez]

We seem to lack belief or confidence or the sense we belong at the top of the game.

We saw it first last Christmas when we should have gone top of the league, then imploding at old trafford.

This season it has been even more evident.

PSG 2nd leg - they were on the ropes and beatable. 30 mins to get the 3rd goal. We fizzled out.

FA Cup semi final. One of the biggest no-shows by any team in the last 30 years.

Old Trafford. Timid, scared, submissive.

What makes it even more frustrating is the we have shown we can beat anyone when we play well, which means the squad is good enough. But the passive nature of our performances when it matters most it too common not to be an issue.

A sports phycologist should be our next big signing.

A season that could (and should) have delivered so much ends with the most basic result, but will see massive upheaval off the pitch. Which is a gamble and a risk in itself.

Agree on the mentality issue. We’ve had two really important games in the past month and failed to show up in either.

Against Man Utd the mentality thing has been there for decades now. It's something inherent that keeps carrying over into subsequent seasons.

[django]

If we had the same number of games missed through injury but dispersed more evenly we’d have got top five comfortably. That spell where we couldn’t field a central defence killed us.

More generally we’ve changed a lot to try and be more consistent. We’ve scored fewer and conceded fewer (despite the injury issues). Games have been reduced to fewer chances each way; which can be efficient when we’re playing well but can seem aimless and clueless when we’re off form.

It feels like we need to tweak further as the changes from last seasons high line and quick breaks haven’t quite found the right balance.

There have been numerous games where we’ve started slowly and a handful of key games where we haven’t turned up at all. There’s a sloppiness that’s crept in, the stats about conceding from our opponents first shot and number of times we had to come from behind show how well we did to nearly finish fifth.

Other slightly perplexing issues that need addressing. Playing Morgan Roger’s into the ground to the point he’s been ineffective for the last month. Not playing Malen and Ramsey at times where we’ve needed pace and width. Not playing Mings when he’s clearly been off of our most efficient defence.
Our inability to play at all against Crystal fucking Palace.

All of that feels like there’s plenty of room to make improvements without throwing away what we’re doing well, especially when one more point would have been enough to qualify for CL.

I just turned 48 and we’ve only had 4 better league finishes in my lifetime, 3 of which I can remember. It feels like we’re still moving in the right direction, even if the chance to spend another season in the CL at Newcastles expense might have been a bit of a sliding doors moment for our future prospects.

We definitely improved with the January loan signings adding more depth; and the challenge now is to try and build that depth while potentially having to replace established players and add back up on a tight budget.

[SaddVillan]

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/may/26/villas-champions-league-miss-wasnt-just-about-one-bad-call?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

It's hard to disagree with anything in this article.

Nails our season completely.

[PaulWinch again]

Well as per the other thread. I think to argue a moment that preceded the disallowed goal, which was 17 minutes from time, is somehow more key is just odd. Also the Sheff Utd comparison is lazy - yes we benefited from that one, but there were 8 and a half games to go at that point. It’s entirely different to the wrong decision with 17 odd minutes left in the season.

I don’t disagree that it’s not just about the disallowed goal, but to argue that isn’t the pivotal moment is just nonsense.

[django]

Yeah it’s a bullshit article. If he’d mentioned the various games people on here have then fair enough.

To sum up his argument, Villa are
Responsible for missing out because they should have beaten Man U, they benefitted from a decision 5 years ago so what do they expect, they’ve spent a lot of money, almost too much despite selling a load of players, they’ll probably have to sell more. They shouldn’t have left it to the last game.

It doesn’t make any sense.

[Villa in Denmark]

Re the Guardian article, he's essentially saying it's our fault the referee guessed at his decision and guessed wrong.  The "journalist" can fuck off.