Yahoo News Simon Jordan explains Aston Villa's £60m windfall amid FFP challenge
Simon Jordan says that Aston Villa have set their watermark by finishing fourth - and that Unai Emery's side will be judged from hereon out by whether they can maintain the ultra high standards they have set themselves after securing Champions League football.
Villa, by virtue of Tottenham's defeat to Manchester City on Tuesday, confirmed their place at next season's European top table after an excellent campaign in which they've earned themselves 68 points with a game to play. The hard work, now, for Emery and co is to keep Villa in the same area of the division while juggling the intense schedule of the Champions League football throughout the autumn and winter.
Jordan, who compared Villa's rise and the challenges which present themselves accordingly to that of Newcastle United's last season, was quick to praise Emery for a job well done having lifted the Lions from the relegation scrap where he discovered them and into Europe's premier competition. Now, you could argue, comes the hard bit.
"When we talk about context and what success in football looks like, Unai Emery is now riding a wave created ultimately by him, with a team which has done remarkably well this season," Jordan told talkSPORT. "They haven't won anything, they've qualified for the Champions League - something Arsenal fans criticised Arsene Wenger for, for years.
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"That's the reality of where Aston Villa are at, because they're building blocks. Newcastle's building block last year was to get fourth in the Premier League - they didn't get fourth this year. I think it's a great achievement. For Unai Emery, I think it's a validation of his capabilities as a manager. His capabilities as a manager were seriously derided by the British media.
"He went away, managed somewhere else, won European competitions, has come back to a slightly lesser club in terms of achievements in recent times in Aston Villa and punched above his weight. Next season, he'll be a victim of his success. Unless he emulates or increases, we'll be having a conversation about Unai Emery and what Aston Villa did next. The depth of squad and the quality of replacement is the next question.
"Right now, the narrative with Villa, having re-emerged after relegation - and it's preposterous that a club of Villa's size got themselves in the Championship - and having stayed up by the skin of their teeth in the first season, is that this could be a moment in time. Unless you're going to go pound for pound and match what others are doing - which will be difficult with the governance and regulations which are beginning to tighten - you'll find yourself in a difficult position.
"You're never going to see a Leicester City winning the league again, but they did once, and they were an outlier. Newcastle were an outlier last season in the top four. I would expect normal service to resume pretty soon. I would expect Chelsea to rediscover their poise. I expect Manchester United to eventually get better in short order and all of a sudden two sides will be back in the mix.
"In the here and now, which we like to do when we're criticising so we should when we're praising, Unai Emery has done a really good job. The problem for the poor bugger is that next year he is going to be judged by these standards. I think this is a moment in time."
Villa will, though, as Jordan points out, have money to spend this summer purely because of their achievement of earning Champions League football. With FFP restrictions forever heightened, that revenue - and the monies which'll accompany their participation in the first phase of the new competition - will come in handy as Emery looks to strengthen his group.
"Villa have, of course, got the added benefit of another £50-60m because of the Champions League," Jordan added. "They'll get another £30m for the group stage, plus the gate receipts. They've got themselves another £30, 40, 50m. They might've triggered some extra revenue from the commercial sponsors because they're in the Champions League and all that goes with it, so they've got £60m of extra revenue.
"I don't know how close they are to the Financial Fair Play governance over the last few years, but Villa are right now a success story - but they move real quick, because they've set their watermark and their watermark is fourth."
