Stefan Borson explains Aston Villa's SCR fine after UEFA's 'embarrassing' mistake
Aston Villa were "quite some way over" to be punished by UEFA with a €22.5million (£19.3m) fine for a conditional Squad Cost Ratio (SCR) breach.
That is according to former Manchester City financial adviser Stefan Borson, who exclusively told Football Insider that UEFA had initially made an error in their figures.
He set the record straight, with Chelsea, Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest also being handed fines for breaches of SCR.
It is understood, while UEFA's initial announcement explained that Villa's full fine would be conditional, that just isn't the case for the Europa League champions.
The Villans are often known for their extremely high wage bill, and for English clubs in Europe, SCR allowance goes from 85 per cent to 70 per cent.
To have been handed such an eye-watering fine, it has been suggested that Villa weren't even close to complying with the rules, rather worryingly.
UEFA got Aston Villa's SCR fine wrong
Speaking exclusively to Football Insider, Borson revealed that £6.4m of Villa's fine can be paid now, while the rest is essentially suspended.
"First thing to say is that it wasn't wholly conditional, which is slightly embarrassing for UEFA that they published a mistake when they first published it," he said.
"Actually, most of it is still conditional but I think €7.5m is payable. Now look, the starting point is to get to a €22.5m fine, they must have been quite some way over because we know the way the SCR penalties work.
"This is unconnected and there have been some mistakes that people have made in terms of conflating a couple of things together.
"One of them is that this is connected to the settlement that they did last year. It's actually not. The settlement is for football earnings.
"It's about the stability side of the punishment and they still have to comply with that over the next three years."
How much did Villa overspend by?
It's tough to say exactly how much the Villans overspent by, but Borson, speaking exclusively to Football Insider, has supplied a rough estimate.
He said: "To get to a €22.5m penalty in the second year, that probably means that their miss was something like €45m, there or thereabouts.
"We don't know exactly because we don't know all the numbers, but it's something like 50 per cent of the size of their miss at to their target."
It certainly doesn't sound positive, leaving supporters understandably concerned by the continuous fines arriving at Villa Park's doors.