It had been a known and accepted fate that Aston Villa was going to get relegated out of the English Premier League for the past few months. The media knew it, the fans knew it, the team even knew it when they cancelled their year-end season awards black tie gala. Now, relegation is official as Aston Villa lost to Manchester United 1-0 and will drop out of the top division in English soccer for the first time since 1987.
While Aston Villa held strong to keep things level with Manchester United at Old Trafford but that only held for about a half hour as Marcus Rashford took the lead for Man United and held on for the three points. The only real threat Aston Villa had at scoring was Rudy Gestede hitting the post toward the end of the game but by then, it was too little too late and Villa drops to the Championship next year.
To signify how big this is, Aston Villa was one of only seven teams to play in every year of the 24 season Premier League with Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham as the other six. Villa drops to the Championship and given how competitive that league is, there’s no guarantee they can bounce back.
In fact, given their financial status, it’s more likely Aston Villa will relegate out of the Championship to League One than back to the Premier League. Villa has the 7th highest wage bill in the EPL and once they enter the Championship, Villa will have to comply to Financial Fair Play regulations, meaning there’s no possible way those players wages can remain that high. That means selling many of these players off for next to nothing and starting from scratch with Championship talent, still resulting in likely huge losses on their return on investment. Things may get worse at Aston Villa before they get better.
