At American University, we don't just hope for change.

We create it.

We don't just dream of a better world.

We make it a reality.

With a graduate degree from A.U.,

you'll access expert faculty and connections throughout D.C.

To develop skills and experience to turn your passion into purpose.

And that purpose can make all the difference in your career.

Discover the difference a degree makes at American.edu slash grad school.

Hello, and welcome to the TIFO football podcast. I am Joe Devine, and today's episode is another

in the sensible

transfer series in which we'll be discussing the Premier League's newly promoted three teams,

Aston Villa, Sheffield United and Norwich City. And I am delighted to say that I am joined by

Ali and George from the Not the Top 20 podcast whose expertise in the football league far outweighs my own. So I'm so pleased to have you here because otherwise this would have gone terribly wrong. Ali, welcome. Thank you. We're very happy to be here. George, welcome. Exactly the same, yeah. I'm delighted to be here. A lot of people, when they say Not the Top 20 podcast for the first time stumble on their words, it's quite a tough one first time round and you've been practicing. I practiced it. Do you have the the? Do you not have the the the? They're not the top 20. Not the top 20. We're happy with either. Happy with honest. NTT 20 pod. NTT 20. Yeah. That sounds like a sort of weird cricket league somewhere. It puts me off guys, I'll be honest. But I think we're going to start with Ashton Villa purely because they have bought so many players. And we have a question from a listener, which I thought might be a nice one to kick us off. N17 asks, do you think the Fulham-Astom-Villa recruitment comparison is lazy? N-. N17 is of course referring to the fact that

Aston Villa have spent close to £100 million already, although it must be prefaced with the fact that a

couple of the players were on loaned last season, right?

Yes.

What does that tell us, guys, about what Aston Villa will be doing next season or in terms of the

amount of business they've actually spent? Is the comparison with Fulham lazy? It is lazy, yeah, but it's an obvious one to make because of the business that Fulham did last season. But if we look at what happened in their relegation campaign, I think there are a lot more problems than just the recruitment side of things, although they did obviously spend a lot of money and it didn't go particularly well. But for Villa,

they were in real trouble after promotion where in terms of contractor players, there were very,

very few that they had because of the loan signings were so important that they made. A lot has been said about the importance of certain players last season, mainly by myself, such as Jack Grealish,

but you look at someone like Tyrone Ming's who came in in January. the impact that he had on their defence was arguably greater. You also added in the fact that Dean Smith came in and got them playing a different brand of football, which all of these players were a recruited for and bought into. Suddenly, you had a squad that didn't resemble anything like the team that had one promotion at Wembley. So having to bring these players in was very important, but also improving on them as well. You look at someone like Anwai Al-Garzi who's come in on a permanent transfer, having played most of last season on the wing in the championship. And whilst he was an important player for them, he didn't tear it up as you'd expect a, you know, a Premier League class winger to do so. And so

...