A big change is coming to the top flight this summer.
Former chief executive Christian Purslow has warned Villa will still face a challenge to compete under the Premier League’s new financial fair play rules.
The current profit and sustainability regulations will be replaced by squad cost ratio from this summer, with club’s limited to spending 85 per cent of their turnover on wages, transfer fees and agents’ fees.
But Villa will still have to comply with Uefa’s stricter regulations, which limits clubs to just a 70 per cent spend, while Purslow has warned the new rules still give an advantage to those clubs with greater revenues.
Villa last week reported record income of £378million for the 2024-25 season but still lag a long way behind the “Big Six”.
Purslow told the Football Boardroom podcast: "There are features of new SCR rules which I like, but fundamentally they remain revenue-based.
“That means that the rules give a huge sporting advantage to those four, five, six clubs in the Premier League who have twice as much turnover as everyone else.
"Just to remind people, four of the teams are now touching £700million of turnover, and then Chelsea and Spurs are not quite at that level, but still £400million to £500million.
“We saw this week that Newcastle, owned by the richest fund in the world, has turnover of half of that level.”
Villa are in a strong position to return to the Champions League next season, sitting fourth in the Premier League with seven matches to play and through the quarter-finals of the Europa League.
But Purslow added: “It is going to take time to break through in meaningful massive uplifts in revenue required to be properly competitive.
“Which means you have to do it the hard way. You have to beat those teams employing footballers on half the wages and that isn’t easy, year-in, year-out.”
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