You're dead right/wrong about Aston Villa's January transfers

Hello and welcome back.

There are loads of new subscribers here - and I wanted to start off with a huge thank you. Thank you to everyone who has joined up to be a part of this newsletter I can't thank you enough!

Today's topics? Well -  I'll reluctantly talk to you about Villa's transfer window, and one concern opening up in the fanbase.

Also, before we get into it, I wanted to let you know you can actually comment on these newsletters. It's a good way to get some healthy debate started away from the weirdness of Twitter.

On with the show.

The Transfer Window

I don't want to talk to you about the transfer market. I don't want to talk to you about the transfer deadline day. It eats away everything that I love about the game.

But here I am, talking to you about it. So it goes.

As someone who worked in the media covering football and Aston Villa - I've had my fill of transfer drama. I can tell you one really sad fact about the media in relation to football transfers. You're not going to like it.

Transfer news dominates. If views/clicks are the metric of choice, any other form of content in the football sphere is entirely fruitless compared to transfer news. Longreads, exclusives, interviews, match reports - all pale in comparison to the one transfer story that any one audience at the time will want to read.

That's sad. I don't know how you fix that. Arguably, people care more about transfers than football itself. You can blame the media as much as you want for that, but I can tell you for a fact: the content only exists because readers crave it.

Honestly, if I seem annoyed - It's because this specific transfer window seems to be pushing online football fandom in an awful direction. Them vs Us - but the battlelines are drawn between two clubs, it's within a single fanbase. Some of the arguments I've seen, the insults, the belittlement and the entitlement. Ridiculous to consider.

So here's my Aston Villa transfer content for you.

Villa did ok. They spent £30-ish million pounds. They sold a player they didn't want to use and loaned out others. Gaps in the squad exist, but January is not the month to execute plans - it is to push the big 'win now' button (the one that Villa already pushed last year on the Phillipe Coutinho/Lucas Digne signings).

They could've done way better. They could've done worse. Villa's window exists solely in a middle ground that barely anyone wants to acknowledge. They did ok! That's fine! It's also a bit bad!

Have they given up on the chase for Europe? Certainly not. It seems Unai Emery prefers a lighter squad and that is his prerogative. Villa's current position is somewhat of an illusion as well - based on underlying numbers you'd expect 8th to be all that is attainable. Fulham may drop off, but Chelsea and Liverpool should wake up. West Ham - despite current form - are one to watch as well.

These are teams Villa will have to beat with results, and not in the marketplace.

I eagerly await the return of football. Transfers can be fun, but the January transfer discourse sucks rotten to its core.

It has been suggested that Malaysian gambling firm BK8 will be Aston Villa's front-of-shirt sponsor for the foreseeable future.

If you think that name is familiar, you'd be correct. If you think it's familiar for bad reasons, you'd also be correct.

'Sleazy' and 'Aston Villa' seem to go hand-in-hand more often these days.

So what's the deal with BK8? Well, it's a well-trodden path, that one.

As a Malaysian firm, BK8 can't - oddly - operate in Malaysia. They do operate in the UK under the same white-label tactic as former Villa sponsor W88, and the money line goes through shell company after shell company once you place a bet.

That's bad enough, but it is par for the course in 2023.

The real dope is this:

A few years ago, Norwich backtracked on a £5m shirt sponsorship deal with the firm due to BK8's use of overtly sexual adverts, featuring extremely young-looking women, to market gambling products. Fans voiced their concerns and Norwich killed the deal.

You might not care about any of the above - but here's something you should care about if nothing else.

Villa fans at the FCG (fan consultation group) have already raised their concerns about yet another offshore gambling company sponsoring Villa, especially one that has used some incredibly dodgy marketing tactics. Villa turned down any notion of a backtrack. The statement from the FCG was as follows:

'While some fans will be disappointed after Villa's current front-of-shirt sponsor moved away from gambling companies, the commercial reality is that to teams outside the top six, such sponsors offer clubs twice as much financially as non-gambling companies.

Boilerplate as they come.

Firstly, I'm not too fussed about the fact that it's a gambling company. It's a reality of football. They should fade out.

It's just again, it's an offshore item that Villa fans can barely use. It's just again it's a betting firm with a spiders-web accounting network behind it. It's just again that it is a firm that has or is deploying awful marketing tactics to earn money. It's just bloody grubby.

What's more, fans raised concerns and were denied. They should be listened to, and I don't think it's a positive direction for the club to go down.

I find it hard to believe that no other sponsor came to the fore. I don't have the data to make a conclusion on that though, but I'd love to see what was on the table, and why Villa went for such a distasteful sponsor above all else.

I've seen a few questions floating around about BK8, so I thought I'd answer them below to finish off.

Villa need cashflow!

I don't buy it. Villa managed to find a hole in their cash flow the last time they pursued European football and hosted the name of local hospice Acorns on their shirt. Our current owners have a net worth of ten times that of then-owner Randy Lerner.

If Lerner found room for Villa to operate, NSWE certainly can.

If you want Villa to be good, they need to rake in sponsorship money.

This is the biggest bullshit of it all. Villa is an ownership-funded club. They spend money, and the owners inject it. This is not very sustainable, but it is key for Villa so that they have available funds to operate.

Villa's owners have injected over £50m this season.

So let's do the maths.

Norwich's deal with BK8 was for £5m. Villa's deal with Cazoo was £6m. Even if Villa's deal with BK8 was for £13m, it'd barely touch the sides of what is needed to bankroll the club.

TV money, prize money and player sales are paramount. Splitting hairs with sponsorship? Come on.

Newcastle are owned by Saudi Arabia, what's the issue with BK8?

If you thought the transfer window brings questions bolstered with laser-guided idiocy, there's nothing like a sponsorship debate.

Newcastle being owned by the PIF is bad. Villa having a sponsorship like BK8 is also bad. There are levels, of course, but god. There are multiple things wrong here and state-ownership of clubs does not make dodgy sponsorship better.

You didn't moan about Genting, W88 and Dafabet - why now?

Yes. We did.

The reality is that while you can't do anything about Villa's bad/good transfer window, you can do something about this. Voice your concerns if you have them.

And if you don't, then sip your tea and sit back - but ask yourself this.

Do you want more from Villa than an alignment with a properly grubby company? I do.