Inside Aston Villa’s £400m upgrade to be Champions League ready and crash ‘big six’

Inside Aston Villa’s £400m upgrade to be Champions League ready and crash ‘big six’

The man in charge of Aston Villa’s quest to permanently establish themselves in English football’s top is unambiguous about the club’s ambition:

Villa wants to get there within the next three years, and once there, they intend to remain.

The first new English team in the contemporary Champions League (Villa won the European Cup in 1982)

since Leicester eight years ago is undergoing significant transition at Villa Park this summer.

Chris Heck, president of business operations and an American hire,

established the plan to increase sales to £400 million by 2027. He understands that the time must be grabbed.

“There has been such a divide between the [Premier League] big six and everybody  else,” he tells Telegraph Sport.

“What is it going to take for one or two clubs to enter into that realm? We have a plan to get there.

We think we will be there in the next three years. We are definitely playing in that space, performance-wise.

We are one of the top performing clubs in the world on the pitch. Our manager [Unai Emery] is arguably top group in the world.

“We have the infrastructure and a fantastic fanbase in the Midlands. A globalised brand with clever and capable owners to get us there.

This is quite exciting. Not many clubs have the possibility, and we are likely one of only two.”

We have a plan for PSR.

We’re talking at Villa’s new central London offices, where Heck, 55, works for part of the week.

Villa Park is poised to reveal what Heck describes as European football’s largest hospitality push: 18 additional premium offers,

including private club space and other suites.

On the pitch, Emery is preparing for the club’s first season in Uefa’s largest club competition since Villa were the reigning champions in 1982-83.

It means that Villa Park is receiving a speedy and massive refurbishment,

which will be completed before the new season begins on August 17.

“Tens of millions of pounds” is the closest Heck will come to placing a price tag on the hospitality redevelopment across three stands, omitting the Holte End.

A comparable sum is being spent on the Bodymoor Heath training complex,

which includes the construction of a 40-room hotel for players and staff,

as well as the installation of new women’s team and academy facilities and pitches.

Heck has been charged by the club’s wealthy owners, Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens,

with increasing the club’s annual revenue to £400 million, which they believe is the current level required to compete with Europe’s super clubs.

Increased revenue. High-quality hospitality. Birmingham’s largest club has offices in London. These are the kinds of priorities that irritate supporters.

However, this is the game today, and both Manchester United and Liverpool have long maintained London bases.

We meet one day after the Premier League AGM,

and Villa’s proposal to increase the permissible losses under profit and sustainability regulations [PSR] to £135 million over three years has failed.

Sawiris will later label PSR a “anti-competitive” impediment to the objectives of a club like his.

It is Heck’s responsibility to discover a way around it.

The obstacles of PSR compliance are significant.

Jhon Duran, a Colombian international striker signed from MLS last summer,

is a Chelsea target Douglas Luiz, another whom Villa would ordinarily not wish to lose, may move to Juventus for £18 million.

Nevertheless, Weston McKennie and Samuel Iling-Junior would join Villa in the other direction and the Luiz fee would count immediately towards PSR compliancy.

“Our owners are very engaged on this as well as Unai,” explains Heck. “I would say that we have a plan.

“It’s a more difficult road than the big six. We need to be more innovative and think differently,

whereas others have sustainable enterprises that can just keep going.

We believe it will take another three years to develop that sustainable business.

In the meantime, we have some very capable persons on the sporting side who are working very similarly to how I am working on the commercial end.”

Villa’s sports director, Ramón Rodríguez Verdejo (aka Monchi), and head of football operations,

Damian Vidagany, collaborate with Emery, the manager who has transformed the club.

Meanwhile, Heck has the responsibility of moving Villa into a different  league on the balance sheet – adding £200 million over four years.

“The first year we were successful,” he states. “We generated £50 million more, and we intend to generate £50 million more each year.”

This has never been done before, and we are doing it. We’re already well on our way. We were on £219 million [year turnover],

so what is the magic number to reach? We believe that entering the sustainability game will cost £400 million. We have a way to get there.

“We just returned from the league meetings.

We understand what we’re up against, and we almost feel compelled to do it on our own.

Because these restrictions are not designed to incentivize an ambitious club. Or a challenger.

It is modifying the three-year permitted losses under PSR to a top limit of £135 million] didn’t go through. I don’t want to keep worrying about it.

“When something doesn’t evolve in 11 years and with the cost of living alone, you scratch your head.

If the Bank of England says inflation of £105 million through an 11-year period [then £105 million] is now at £143 million.

You would think we would follow that same logic but the league has decided not to.

I don’t want to waste my time griping about it.

I want to find a new path and I think that is where Aston Villa enters into that big club realm.

We have to just get there. So how do you get there within the rules? Well, you try to work harder, and get smarter and be better at what you do.”

‘There’s more than one type of English football fan’

Heck previously worked in US sports marketing for the NBA and Major League Soccer for 33 years.

He clearly has a restless urge to move forward.

The club has a new kit partnership with Adidas,

its first with the German powerhouse, in whom Sawiris is a key shareholder,

and a front-of-shirt sponsor with the online gambling business Betano.

The redevelopment at Villa Park will entail converting police holding cells in the North Stand,

which were meant to house unruly spectators, into a new suite.

“The Cells” will be one of 18 newly themed options, totaling 5,000 hospitality tickets at various pricing points.

There is a new superstore and “The Warehouse”, an attached matchday food  and drink space which will eventually also become a 4,000-capacity concert venue.

For the US sports executive, British stadiums can be something of a step back in time although Heck is polite about that.

He looked at Tottenham Hotspur and Fulham’s Riverside Stand as he sought to shape what Villa might do.

“Premium meant [at Villa Park] you got a suite, 12 tickets and a rectangular table for a sit down like a family meal,” he says.

“It’s wonderful and everyone enjoys themselves but that was the only option.

My thought is ‘let’s give people more options and I bet you they are going to be interested’. There is not just one type of English football fan.”

There will be more season tickets on sale next season, as supporters have requested,

and more the next season, however the adjustment has come at a cost.

Approximately 900 season ticket holders have had to change seats.

Concerning the proposed destruction of the North Stand in favour of something larger and better, the club believes it just does not make sense.

“How do you use what money you have best for the club?” Heck says.

“We could knock down a stand, add seats, and pay it off over 17 years.

That was the mathematics. Last November, I thought this made little sense.

We lack the infrastructure to quickly add 10,000 seats in the blink of an eye.

We were also playing extremely well and had this vision in November we could be in the Champions League.

Would we want to knock down a quarter of the stadium and then have this small venue of 36,000 seats to watch a Champions League club?”

“He is leading this club somewhere new.”

Instead, the goal is to achieve swift success on the pitch as soon as possible.

“I appreciate it’s an inconvenience [for season ticket holders moved],

I really do,” Heck asserts. “I just hope we can be clear so that everyone understands what the overall picture is.

That is, fans come first, and the most important thing we want to provide to them is a winning squad.”

He maintains there are no plans to leave Villa Park. “First and foremost,

it is really expensive. Second, it takes a long time. We’re striking while the iron is hot.

Few people can begin a project while you are performing well.

You start the project and then expect to play well six to eight years later.

We are playing well now. OK, how fast can we catch that train? We are saying we will catch that train – we have three more years.

We are on the right pace after year one.”

Emery’s new contract means that he is no longer a head coach but a manager – and one in whom the owners and club have placed all trust.

Not hard to see why with the struggles others have had to appoint a similarly transformative figure in that role.

“He is truly our manager,” Heck says.

“It means [the role change] that there is stability, that we have trust in Unai and we are working in conjunction with Unai.

“We share the same vision, but he is taking this club to places we haven’t seen.

You must not underestimate this. He is a fantastic person. Not only does he work with players individually and as a team,

but he also has a support network of coaches. We are implementing a transformational programme for the club. It truly is.

Within Villa, there is a strong sense that this is one of the lesser-known ownership revolutions.

Outside of the Premier League’s big six, only Villa, Newcastle, Leeds United, Blackburn,

and Leicester City have advanced to the post-1992 Champions League group stages.

“It is not simple, nor is it for the faint of heart, but this has the makings of an unbelievable  story happening in front of our eyes,”

Heck says. “Why should everyone care? The big six is going to make room for one or two more clubs and we are going to be one of them.”

This year is Villa’s 150 anniversary, and Heck points out they have the advantage of being the biggest club in the biggest English city outside Greater London.

“We are in a really interesting time of English football right now,” Heck says. “It has been a good decade of big six stability,

meaning they have kept everyone out. Newcastle last year, us this year. I think it is changing and I wouldn’t bet against us.”

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