Steve Bruce has called for Financial Fair Play rules to be scrapped while revealing he did not expect to be balancing Aston Villa's books as much as required.
The Villa manager needs to raise funds before he can sign new players due to excessive spending in previous windows and feels he may have to sell players he would ideally like to keep.
Bruce has so far brought in John Terry and Christopher Samba on free transfers, Sam Johnstone on loan and Ahmed Elmohamady and Glenn Whelan for a combined £2.5million.
That is offset by sales of Jordan Veretout, Carlos Sanchez and Nathan Baker totalling nearly £12m.