alex7783

Surely this situation has been on the cards for many years, if you have an elderly chairman who point blank refuses to delegate responsibility then once he loses the ability to run the business noone has a clue what to do. Then the business enters freefall, the share price collapses, therefore the owner can no longer demand as much for his shares and the business gets taken over. On a different note, does anyone else really wish Langham was still on board. With Ellis clearly out of the decision making loop that would have put all decision making responsibility at the feet of the CEO, Langham!! Which would have been very interesting

Petchey definately wants out. I know from a reliable source that he has been touting villa around as being 'for sale' and that quite interestingly it was petchey that approached the comers, as he is a shareholder in comer homes! Make of this what you will.

What I find ridiculous is how Doug has slowly over the years worn us down to his level. We started off begging for major mega millions signings ie Vieri (remember that link!!!) Juninho etc, then moved down to more realistic wants, your dublins, stones, alpays etc to the last couple of seasons of any signings we can get our hands on, djemba x2s, bersons, phillips, bergers and now to top it all off he's now got us begging for loan signings FFS and i'm sure if we do now get a CB on loan then it'll job well done Ellis, sound financial ship, no debt etc. Bollocks in five years he has lowered our expectations from signing world class superstars such as juninho to loan signings a la cole, bakke, milner. It has become a fcuking joke. I'm planning on writing to doug very shortly and enclosing a number of local old peoples nhs hospices, lets see how he feels about scrimping and saving on his own fcuking retirement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BTW, I think I read somewhere that Ellis invented Wanking whilst on a fishing trip with Pele, apparently Pele was having difficulty 'getting it up' So Ellis devised a useful technique to remedy the situation. From that moment on Pele was like a son to him. What a guy!

Window closes on the 31st jan. Upon which the takeover willl collapse, allowing ellis an excuse for not spending in the transfer window. He will then procede to explain to us how he's saved Villa from the clutches of the evil irish brothers. Who, rumour has it, were planning on putting the long term survival of the club, that he has personnally spent years bringing down from the risky unpredictable heights of European champions to a much more acceptable, stable and predictble level of mid table mediocraty, in jeopardy by suggesting investment in players leading to increased competitiveness both on and off the pitch. A gamble far to risky in modern football, for gods sake look at Leeds. We should thank the heavens that we have such a chairman in place that will ensure that, during his lifetime, events such as these will never occur. Long live the Chairman/CEO/Financial director/Director of Football/General Manager/Stratagist/Purchasing Director!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well in about 24 hours i'd expect there will be an article somewhere saying that an insider close to the comer brothers expects there to be major developments within the next week/two weeks/sometime during 2006. This is becoming very predictable isn't it?

Doesn't look like it. I'm guessing no villa fan has won the euromillions jackpot then!!!!!!!!

Interestingly the share price has plummeted today and is now the lowest its been since the approach statement by the club was made. Not sure what this means but it seems a bit strange to me. If the city were expecting a takeover shortly then surely the price would be going up. Is this perhaps an indication that the comer bid is well and truly dead?

This backs up my opinion of the comer group, that they are only in it for the money!! For once I am more convinced that doug is doing the right thing for the club (admitedly it's the first time). I actually hope that this particular takeover does fall through and other investors appear that want what's best for AVFC and not their own profit and loss account.

Just looked at the london stock exchange website and Villa's period name has now changed from MQP to EOA (End of Admin) can anyone shed some light on what this means?

That is him caring and loving the club, the problem with ellis is not that he doesn't care about the club, the problem is that he has a set way of doing things. A way that he thinks is best for the club but is so stubborn and up his own arse that he has never listened to advice or changed his way of doing things since the seventies!

pp how can say that when something has been such a huge part his life for so many years that won't give a shit what happens to it once he's left. In my opinion that's a crock of shit....

I agree that the deal will not go through, however..... I have always been one of ellis' strongest critics, i believe he has held the club back through constant pennypinching, archaic strategies, shortsightedness the list goes on. This time though i do believe that he has got the best interests of the club in mind when selling. At the end of the day there is considerable milaege in the view of Ellis as Mr Aston Villa. Due to the fact that Villa has been his life for the last 23 years he is not going to sell to someone that does not want the best for villa. As it has been pointed out many times before, he has already taken vast sums out of villa so is probably not going to too concerned with a couple of million either way.

I must admit, the longer this saga goes on, the less convinced i am that the comers have villa's best interests at heart. I believe they have placed neville at the forefront of the consortium to allow the deal to go through without fan opposition. Once they had control of the club i imagine they thought they could build on the land to make a profit, marginally improve the clubs performance. Then wait for the share price to increase and sell to the highest bidder.