It could well have been Unai Emery sat in the opposite dugout for Sunday’s clash between Newcastle and Aston Villa, had things played out differently.
Rewind to just over four years ago and Emery was leading the race to become the new Magpies boss, before turning down the chance to move to the Premier League in order to stay with Villarreal. Newcastle would instead opt for Eddie Howe to lead them into a new era under new ownership and the rest, as they say, is history.
Howe will undoubtedly go down as one of the club’s best ever managers. He guided them to a first piece of silverware in 70 years by winning the Carabao Cup last season, as well as securing a return to Champions League football.
Emery, meanwhile, would take the Villa job just under a year later, and has since developed the club from a side in relegation trouble to one of the Premier League’s top sides. He may yet to have delivered the trophy Villa fans are craving, but qualifying for Europe in three straight seasons would have been barely imaginable when Emery took the job in 2022.
Chafing Under PSR
Both managers taking the path that they did has worked out more than well. But there remains a similarly underlying frustration at each of these clubs too. For all their success, both find themselves in a comparable predicament whereby they feel restricted in their ability to truly challenge at the very top despite their huge financial backing.
Although Villa have defied that somewhat this season, sitting third in the table, each club aligned in their dissatisfaction with the limitations placed on them by the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR).
PSR, which will be scrapped next season in favour of a squad cost ratio system similar to that used in European competitions, means clubs are only permitted to lose £105m over a rolling three-year period or face potential punishment.
Both clubs have flown too close to the sun in recent years as they have tried to balance their ambitions to compete at the top while needing to comply with the rules. Villa were fined for breaching UEFA’s financial rules while Newcastle’s sale of Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest (below) is widely believed to have been due to PSR concerns.
Howe again touched on the frustrations of the financial rules ahead of Sunday’s clash, having yet to strengthen his squad this month. “We have our strategy,” he said. “PSR is controlling what we are able to do.
“I think we understand that gives us limited room to manoeuvre to try to bring a player in that’s good enough to elevate the group and have a long-term future at the football club with the finances we have. It is very, very difficult so let’s see what happens in the last few days.”
Strong in the Table
For now, though, both sides are once again in firm contention for European qualification despite those challenges. Villa remain only seven points behind league leaders Arsenal while Newcastle in eighth are just two points off fifth and three behind fourth.
Both clubs have come a long way in recent years, but there still remains a question of what if, and what more could be possible if they were allowed to spend more freely.
