Aston Villa chief ‘profoundly worried’ as Newcastle ownership, potential Man Utd takeover and more discussed

Aston Villa’s chief executive Christian Purslow has called for ‘extremely strict financial rules’ and says he is ‘profoundly worried’ about Premier League clubs having the backing of foreign governments.

Purslow, who was the co-founder of private equity firm MidOcean Partners and previously served as the managing director of Liverpool and managing director & head of global commercial activities at Chelsea, was speaking to Sky News and made his feelings clear on the issues. He singled out Newcastle United’s Saudi Arabian owners as well as the potntial Qatari takeover of Manchester United.

He said: “I am profoundly worried about it. It is a clear and present danger. I’ll speak as a football fan. I don’t want to look back in 20 years’ time and say that I was part of a group that were asleep at the wheel. In 20 years’ time we look back and three teams, controlled by nations, are the only three teams winning the Premier League ever again. How do we stop that? We stop it with what we have today, which is extremely strict financial rules.”

The 59-year old made several claims in the interview, including that financial regulations in football had been too lax for many years and too dificult to enforce but does believe this is changing. He also backed calls for the Premier League to re-examine the takeover of Newcastle United in 2021, saying: “If there is a contradiction in representation made at the time of the takeover, as to the nature of the relationship between the rulers of that country - the sovereign wealth fund and Newcastle - of course, the Premier League, I’m sure, are investigating that.”

He continued: “There is nothing in the football rule book that could or would have prevented that takeover. Many people perhaps think there should be and could be, but I think that’s pretty unrealistic. You know, if you think about the idea of this country’s relationship with friendly states, with allies, nations on which we rely, I was looking only yesterday, people talking about a potential takeover of Manchester United and the potential for Qatar to be involved in that.

“You know, this is a country on whom we depend for our energy supplies in the last 12 months. So, it seems to me wholly unrealistic to imagine a group of football executives, whether the Premier League board or other clubs, to block takeovers of football clubs, when those nations are freely able to trade with our country more broadly. What we’re not doing is having a separate set of football rules that somehow trump or override decisions taken by governments on our behalf. I think that’s realistic and sensible. The alternative seems to be crazy.”