Aston Villa's €700 million transfer problem laid bare

Aston Villa have invested heavily in their squad over the years, and while the current investment looks to be well thought out, this hasn't always been the case.

The ownership of the club in the last decade has been turbulent, from a lack of spending at one period of time, to unsustainable investment almost running the club into extinction in another.

CIES Football Observatory have delved into the spending across the current big-5 league clubs, according to their net spending on transfers over the last ten seasons.

Manchester United top the table with a negative balance of more than one billion euro, ahead of Manchester City and Paris St-Germain. Fourteen English clubs are in the top 20 of clubs with the most negative net transfer spending.

Villa have spent a total of €701 million since the summer of 2012, which translates into around £590m. With an overall net spend of minus €424 million, Villa sadly have little to show for such an immense amount of investment over the last decade.

Especially when comparing it to the success of the club directly below them in the net spending table, Chelsea, who have a net spent of -€413 million.

In this time period Chelsea have won two Premier League titles, one League Cup, one FA Cup, one Europa League, one Champions League and a UEFA Super Cup.

There are other teams who have little to show for the spending, such as Everton who sit above Villa in both overall spending and net losses.

Since 2018, Villa have been in the safe hands of Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens and the days of irrational and unsustainable investment are seemingly gone. Villa recently had arguably their most impressive transfer window as Philippe Coutinho and Lucas Digne arrived at the club, hinting at an improvement