Aston Villa owners' grand vision remains undimmed despite threat of relegation

Less than two years after rescuing Aston Villa from the brink of financial oblivion, Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens are making trips to Wembley an annual event.

It is still early into NSWE’s five-year plan, and relegation to the Championship this season remains a serious prospect, but this is a world away from the turmoil of May 2018 when one of English football’s founder members was on the verge of administration.

Sawiris and Edens will both be in attendance for Sunday’s Carabao Cup Final, along with Villa supporter the Duke of Cambridge, and the transformation under the billionaire businessmen so far has been remarkable.

Villa are now back competing in the Premier League, with a waiting list for season tickets of 7,000, and the financial picture is healthy with a clear strategy and ambition to keep the club moving forward.

Sawiris and Edens have, so far, made an encouraging start towards delivering on their promise to "bring sustainable success to the club, building on its rich history while respecting its loyal fan base and unique culture”.

Whatever happens against Carabao Cup holders Manchester City on Sunday - who have beaten Villa twice this season with an aggregate score of 9-1 - there is optimism over the future and a sense of stability off the field.

“The owners have invested a lot of their own money to set this club on a good footing so we can go and compete at the highest level in the Premier League,” said Dean Smith, Villa’s head coach.

“We need to go and retain our status as a Premier League club this season but we are also in a domestic cup final as well. As well as the players, a lot of credit goes to the owners with their investment and vision for the club.

“They are exceptional businessmen and the partnership works in a really good way.”

There was a grim reminder of the club’s troubled past on Friday, when Villa reported losses of just under £69 million in their financial accounts. Remarkably, that figure included a £30 million payment to former owner Randy Lerner, with the cheque written by NSWE as Dr Tony Xia, who passed the club on to the current owners, failed to pay up.

Indeed, it is easy to forget just how perilous the situation was after Villa’s defeat to Fulham in the 2018 Championship play-off final.

The day before that game, there was a warning from HMRC that the club would be wound up unless they paid a £4.2million tax bill.

Six weeks of financial crisis followed, with administration appearing inevitable, until NSWE chose their moment with Villa at the lowest ebb in its recent history.

Edens, in particular, had been desperate to acquire a club in the Premier League after falling in love with football at the 1994 World Cup, which was held in his native United States.

A co-owner of NBA team Milwaukee Bucks, Edens once held talks with David Beckham over potential investment into Inter Miami but his ambition was always to buy an English club with a proud history.

Sawiris, reportedly Egypt’s richest man with a fortune of $7.2 billion, had the same vision and their arrival was confirmed in July 2018.

Christian Purslow, who has vast previous experience with Liverpool and Chelsea, was appointed as chief executive a few weeks later to effectively run the club on a daily basis.

Since Xia’s three-year association with Villa was formally ended in August 2018, over £250 million in capital has been injected into the club by NSWE.

Following promotion from the Championship, when the club had only 11 contracted players on the books, £127 million was spent in the summer to bring in new recruits.

Admittedly, not all of those signings have worked out, but this was a club starting from scratch and those accusations over “doing a Fulham” (also known as “promotion followed by a trolley-dash”) continue to frustrate Villa officials.

There is an eye on the future, too, with £20 million spent on improving the club’s academy, with the ultimate target of becoming the best in the Midlands.

NSWE could have invested more money but, like Everton, are ultimately prevented from doing so by the Premier League’s Financial Fair Play rules.

Relegation back to the Championship remains the elephant in the room, and this week many Villa fans have been debating whether they would favour silverware over survival.

They produced arguably their worst performance of the season at Southampton last weekend, and are only one place above the dreaded dotted line. More pain could be ahead.

The future of captain Jack Grealish is also uncertain, probably regardless of their Premier League fate. One thing is for sure, however: Villa’s owners do not need the money.

There is also a plan in the event of relegation and Villa continue to insist they will not be in danger of breaching financial rules.

But these are all potential issues for the summer and, for now, a second date at Wembley in under a year proves that Villa are back in the national conscience.

As Sawiris said after last season’s play-off victory, “the sky is the limit”.