"Four wins in a row, seven games unbeaten and suddenly life does not seem so bad for Aston Villa. They are up into mid-table and if a 2-0 victory over Feyenoord in the Europa League will not quite live in the memory in the way last season's games against Bayern Munich, Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain do, a return to Rotterdam at least evoked the glory days of 1982."
"The answer to which, just as it was for Newcastle, who also began the season in apparent denial about the quality of the squad, is profitability and sustainability rules (PSR). My Guardian colleague Barney Ronay has a theory that managers were essentially invented as a scapegoat, so that infuriated crowds could abuse the beleaguered figure on the touchline rather than a club's board. The European Union used to perform a similar function for the UK government."
"PSR is far from perfect. It has, surely without meaning to, created an environment in which clubs are incentivised to sell homegrown talent and to maintain a constant churn of transaction to generate, thanks to the marvels of amortisation, the book profit that gives them PSR headroom. But there are two things to be said in its defence. First, that clubs voted on it."
Aston Villa have won four consecutive matches and remain unbeaten in seven, lifting them into mid-table. A 2-0 Europa League victory over Feyenoord recalled the club's 1982 European memories rather than recent high-profile fixtures. Missing out on the Champions League still frustrates the club, but confidence is growing that Villa could win the Europa League. Early-season poor form stemmed largely from profitability and sustainability rules (PSR), which constrained club decisions. PSR has incentivised selling homegrown talent and frequent transfers to create book profits through amortisation, while managers often become scapegoats for wider structural issues.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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