Aston Villa star takes aim at £43m Newcastle United transfer - 'it's strange'
Aston Villa felt they had little choice but to sell the midfielder to Newcastle United amid the financial rules.
John McGinn remains adamant that Aston Villa should never have been forced to sell Jacob Ramsey to Newcastle United to comply with financial rules.
Ramsey, a boyhood Aston Villa fan, came through the academy at the Midlands club and made 167 senior appearances before joining Newcastle for £43million last year.
Villa’s decision to sell the midfielder came against the backdrop of the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) and UEFA’s Squad Cost Rules. PSR has incentivised clubs to sell academy graduates, with such sales counting as “pure profit”.
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Newcastle were forced to do the same a year earlier, offloading Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest. The 23-year-old went on to join Manchester City this summer for £116million.
McGinn criticised the rules at the time of Ramsey’s departure, writing on social media: “A sad day losing a top player and person and one of our own but it seems to be the way football is set up these days!”
And the Villa captain is still feeling 12 months on. McGinn & Co visit St James’ Park on Saturday night, although Ramsey will miss the game through a groin injury.
“Aye, it’s strange,” McGinn told Sky Sports when asked about the financial rules. “I’m not educated enough to know the fine details of it but I’ve known for a long time that we needed to sell players. The amount of players I wasn’t quite sure.
“The main one was Jacob Ramsey leaving. You should never be almost forced to sell a young player to balance the books, someone who has been an Aston Villa fan his whole life, who we’ve seen grow from a skinny wee guy to an absolute machine, brilliant around the dressing room and a big Villa fan.
“If you said to him, ‘could you envisage playing at another club other than Aston Villa?’ No, but the rules forced us to use him as an asset to balance our books, and that’s what we did.
“Now obviously with players leaving, it’s probably forced us to freshen up the squad and bring younger players in. There can be a narrative which I agree with in the sense that you want to keep your best players and keep adding to it, but it has allowed us to try and build again and make it a sustainable club to play for.
“As long as we are sticking to the rules, I’m happy.”