Aston Villa move to sell women’s team in push to avoid PSR breach | OneFootball

Aston Villa have moved to sell their women’s team to help comply with the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability regulations. Villa are confident of avoiding a PSR breach, allowing them to keep their top players.

Villa have agreed a deal to sell their women’s team to V Sports, their parent company founded by the club’s billionaire owners, Wes Edens and Nassef Sawiris. V Sports own a 29% stake in the Portuguese side Vitória SC and a 25% stake in Real Unión, in which Villa’s manager, Unai Emery, has a controlling stake.

Meanwhile, Emiliano Martínez is thought to be seeking a fresh challenge but the Argentina goalkeeper, thought to be the club’s highest earner, is under contract until 2029. Villa have no desire to sell assets such as Morgan Rogers or Ollie Watkins.

Chelsea balanced the books by selling their women’s team to the club’s parent company, BlueCo, generating almost £200m. For Villa, the sale of the women’s team would provide a significant financial boost in their PSR calculations. A sale of the women’s team can be included in the 2024-25 accounts after Monday’s accounting deadline, providing it has been agreed in principle.

Villa finished sixth in the Women’s Super League and have played in the top flight since 2020-21. Villa’s men’s team also finished sixth in 2024-25, securing a place in the Europa League.

Villa have been working to alleviate financial pressures after absorbing losses of £195m in the past two years. Fringe players could be offloaded, but Emery is determined to enhance his squad after qualifying for European competition for a third successive season.

Villa are working to terminate the contract of Philippe Coutinho, who signed permanently from Barcelona on a four-year contract worth about £125,000 a week in 2022. The 33-year-old Brazil midfielder has spent the past two seasons on loans. The defender Kaine Kesler-Hayden, who spent last season on loan at Preston, is expected to join Coventry for £3.5m and the forward Louie Barry could join Hull, where he spent the second half of last season on loan, on a permanent basis. Neither deal would have a significant bearing on Villa’s PSR.

The loans of Marcus Rashford, Marco Asensio and Axel Disasi end on Monday, when the contracts of backup goalkeeper Robin Olsen and defender Kortney Hause also finish.

Last summer, Villa sold Douglas Luiz to Juventus in a £42m deal on the eve of the PSR accounting deadline, bringing in sufficient funds to avoid a probable points deduction. At the time, Villa turned down offers for Martínez and Jacob Ramsey.

Villa’s run to the last 16 of the Champions League last season generated about £100m, but one of the biggest hurdles facing Villa is Uefa’s squad cost ratio rules, where clubs’ spending is capped in relation to revenue. Villa are expected to be fined after being found in breach of SCR last season.

Header image: [Photograph: Cody Froggatt/PA]