Unai Emery exposes Monchi's Aston Villa exit as astonishing FFP reveal comes to light

Unai Emery has revealed the real reason why Monchi left Aston Villa.

He joined the Villans in June of 2023, working closely with Emery and the club to keep it on the right financial path.

Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens both pushed hard to appoint him as president of football operations, but he will have known what he was getting into.

Villa lost £85.4million after tax for the 2023-24 season, which followed an even greater figure of £119.6m the previous campaign.

Monchi came to Villa Park knowing that NSWE were struggling off the field, but the club revealed on their official website that they had "strategic" plans to make things better.

Despite this, the now-Espanyol director felt to need to lead Villa on, finishing with a poor summer transfer window last summer before leaving to go back to Spain.

Emery has now spoken out about Monchi's Aston Villa departure, and it's not a good look for the latter.

What Unai Emery has said about Monchi exit

Monchi became heavily involved with the CD San Fernando 1940 project in September 2025, a newly reformed club in his hometown.

He left B6 shortly after, leaving Emery with broken pieces to try and fix in the January window.

Thankfully, he reunited with Roberto Olabe, who the Villa boss had previously worked with in Spain, and the pair managed to guide the club to European glory at the end of the season.

This came despite NSWE UK Limited announcing £96.7m in losses on their accounts, which was shifted away from Villa to help PSR and other financial fair play concerns.

The B6 side also had to navigate around a £4.2m loss limit for UEFA last campaign, who also fined them £19.2m in June for breaching squad cost limits.

Villa are still going strong despite all the financial talk, and Emery's latest comments have exposed Monchi, confirming he left due to being scared FFP rules.

Emery said, as quoted by Diario de Sevilla: "At Aston Villa I said 'Monchi, what's wrong?' I had read that he was going out and he came with me.

"We have worked well and at ease for two years but he was also with the San Fernando project, which was very attractive to him. We also had some difficulties in [financial] fair play, so between one thing and another, he to [go].

"We had to sell and we also had a hard time there with everything, and even then everything went well, but it was difficult."

Monchi clearly left because he though he had conducted a poor transfer window after he failed to provide under constraints.

Interestingly, Villa won the Europa League and qualified for the Champions League after he left.

Why Monchi jumped ship at Aston Villa at the wrong time

Villa are looking to improve their revenue, which will help them with the new SCR in the Premier League.

Chris Heck was brought in to help in this area, and Villa increased their revenue by 37 per cent, as revealed on their 2024-25 accounts.

The Villans only made £52m in player profits in 2024-25, keeping hold of players like Morgan Rogers and Ollie Watkins, so the argument that Monchi left because the squad wasn't good enough is embarrassing.

Yes, Villa have had to sell under Olabe this summer, but a transitional period was always destined to come to B6 this yea.

The bottom line is that Monchi left at the worst time.