mikeyjavfc

He's not worth £30m, especially when Man Utd would love his wages off the books, but Maguire will be a good signing for West Ham. In their system he can focus on the basics and he wont need to play out or pass progressively. With him, Zouma and Dawson they will be dominant in the air, and with JWP on set pieces they will be dangerous. No one was lining up to buy Dawson last year either but he has been decent for them. However, once Moyes is inevitably sacked and a more progressive manage is brought in, he will be stuffed.

Alan Nixon story…would be amazed if there is any truth in this at all.

Going to be a ECL cult hero me thinks.

I like it, I'll probably buy it. Its a third kit its supposed to be batshit insane. CHEER UP PEOPLE!

Looks like the background from the kit announcement video? It’s likely a production sample using one of the crew to get the framing / lighting etc right before filming the players. Not sure why it’s on Twitter. The geezer doesn’t look like a footballer physique to me but then neither does John McGinn

Why do you think we now have a “Warehouse”

There’s a long-read about this on The Atlétic.

The warehouse looks better than villa live did anyway and leaves a bit of heritage on the site. If we want to sell villa park as a historic ground then we need to keep at least some of the character and features. If we rip up our stands and surrounds, and do not retain or recreate the original features we may as well move stadium.

Wonder if either of them will be flying out on the US tour.

If and when Newcastle sell or loan any players to PIF teams I suspect the PL will create a new fair value rule for related party player sales, similar to how they do already for sponsorship. It won’t stop an easy sale if one is needed but would hopefully stop silly money being declared for sales. Even better would be if it was declared as owner capital injection since it the same owner after all!

This is said a lot but to be fair nothing really scales down to Twitter/instagram icon size, which is what I imagine most people are thinking about when they say this. I’d much rather have something slightly more complex and accept that it doesn’t scale down well to tiny tiny scales. Feels like a lot of badges have been badly compromised in recent times so they look good at small scales to the detriment of the overall badge: see the new Everton badge that was abandoned. I’d rather have the best badge possible and then accept that a simplified version may need to be used for tiny scales. Heck used multiple badge versions for the 76ers so maybe this is something they will consider.

Time to revert to the standard moans: -It takes ages to get a pint at half time? -Why is the new shirt released so late?! -They’ve flipped the lion around on the badge!

Flipping the lion was change for the sake of change so the owners and / or CEO could feel like they had a proper distinguishing change from the previous badges, that defines their new era. I’m sure it was also pushed by the designer as they too will wanted to put their name to something with significant design changes and not just a rehash of the 1980s badge. I understand it, but the flip side is that it shat on 150 years of history and nostalgia for all villa fans. I hope Heck does a flip reverse!

Yeah I understand this was a risk reward type signing but it is just the fee that baffles me I guess. At £18m he must be in the top ~1% or so for transfer fees made for an 18 year old in world football? About the same as what Dortmund paid for Haarland. That’s not a petty cash signing like those lads we seem to pick up from West Brom every window. For those figures I would expect him to be a lot closer to first team than he seems to be, but maybe he will hit the ground running this season and it’ll all make sense.

I don't really understand this transfer. We all laughed when Chelsea paid £20m Chukwuemeka but we seem to have paid c. £18m for a player totally unready for the first team. He is young so he has time on his side but I fail to see how we arrived at £18m for such a raw player, who will probably spend the first 18 months of his contract on loan or not seriously being considered for the first team. He has 6months under his belt now of Emery coaching so hope we can see something from him soon if this is going to work out. This is giving me Fabio Silva vibes, albeit he was double(!) the money of Duran.

I don’t think you can blame the fans, ultimately the designers (and management that approved the designs) are to blame. The fans were given two bad options to vote for and voted for the least bad option (in my opinion). If the designer’s produce two fantastic options to vote for, or even one fantastic option and one stinker, then we will get a good badge. Still can’t believe the designer’s killer design feature was flipping the lion around

I don't think it will change the development too much. There will just be parking where the proposed Villa Live building would have been. They will still go ahead with 'Villa way' in front of North stand, and this will likely be extended in an L-shape to meet the front of refurbed academy building. Presumably all the admin offices will be pushed to the far end of academy building and the fan zone stuff will be on the near end with a new entrance punched through the side elevation that faces the North stand. A minor benefit is that there will be unobstructed views of the new North Stand without the 3-storey Villa Live building in the way! The biggest uncertainty is how the North stand could accommodate the new shop and cafe. I presume there will be some big internal changes for that to work. Hope it doesn't squeeze any of the the other areas.

Well the letter says the Academy building will now be retained...this building clashes with the footprint of the proposed villa live building so it would not be possible to keep this under the current plans. It also says the club shop and new sports bar cafe, which were proposed to be within the new Villa live building, will now be within the North Stand itself. And the club offices and event fan zone, which were proposed to be within the new villa live building, will be moved to the refurbished Academy building. So all the proposed functions of the villa live building have been shifted elsewhere. Seems pretty clear to me that a standalone villa live building has been shelved. Just remains to be seen what the refurbished academy building will be like. Its a big building that could be made to look quite attractive with some new cladding, so not the worst idea. If they go down this route I'd be surprised if they ever bother to build a standalone VL building, at least for several years anyway. It's a lot of changes to unpick at a later date at high cost for not much benefit assuming the Academy building refurb is done properly.

Reading between the lines it sounds like the villa live building has been canned and aspects of it moved to a refurb of the academy building. The new shop and cafe/bar is moved into North Stand itself. To be honest as long as all the public realm improvements happen to level the ground and open up a new “villa way” as it was described I don’t think it is that big of a loss. The fan zone experience could still be done well outside with outdoor bars and food outlets etc.

From a brand perspective If we are simplifying the badge to a lion only then the star is needed to differentiate it from various other rampant lion crests (dutch national team etc.). Unfortunately the lion is not unique to villa, but the lion and star is. Maybe the star could be incorporated better rather than just pasted above, which does look to be an after thought.

Imagine a new employee arriving, taking some of you duties and instantly killing a major project you had worked on for over a year at the 11th hour in the most embarrassing way possible. I’d quit too.

Pretty obvious villa are trying the limit the exposure of the new badge to kill the idea that it is our new permanent crest. That video has a flag of the new crest front and centre. A mess basically and sad for those involved with making the video.

I bet Villa reeeaalllyyy wish they hadn’t flipped the lion around now killing any semblance of consistency between the old and new badge. The funny thing is if villa had done a limited edition round badge for the 1982 anniversary using the same lion on both it would have been well received and brilliant marketing move. I think for the next iteration villa need to make the lion (and star) the main consistent feature and the crest around the lion can change depending on use case and it will still be recognisable as villa no matter how it is used.

Examples of the rebrand of the 76ers crest overseen by Chris Heck in 2015 for a sign of things to come. Hope you like stars on the badge

A crazy decision. How can the brand be so disjointed even on the SAME SHIRT!? Would have been easiest decision in the world to flip that around to match the new badge. I bet it is the old Lion shape too.