Mistake made in good faith. Still, you arguing in good faith that 213 mill in 2003-2005 is the same as 200 mill in 2019-2021 is hilarious. Take the (corrected to the BR number, which I confirmed in the Guardian) 24 mill paid for Drogba. What does a player like that go for in today's market? Oh, we could look at Kai Havertz a young International forward who's announced himself in Europe- 70 million.

On top of that, the clubs were in a very different place when our billionaires took over. Villa were about to get shut down because Tony Xia was a comical idiot who bought a football club without testing if he could actually bring his money over. Chelsea were what Spurs were under Poch- knocking on the door but not yet challenging. So yes, spending was in order for Villa to be able to maintain a Premier League place, work up the table and then get to a spot to knock on the

The 100 mill Villa dropped after the promotion was mostly spent on making important loans permanent (Mings for 20 mill, Hause for 5 mill and El Ghazi for 8 mill), and backfilling a squad that had been made up of loan players and late-career players. It wasn't consolidating a midtable side to push on for title challenges. Not yet anyway.

Also, you confuse me with someone who thinks there's a good billionaire. I know the game's dirty, but Chelsea are one of the only teams who stockpile players and loan them out as a matter of transfer policy.

Finally, that article talks up 2 BILLION spent in a decade. And that's BEFORE elite clubs were regularly paying 50 billion