Panto_Villan

It's better to have loved and lost, then never loved at all. There's no shame in getting excited that Villa might make it back to the big time, even if it didn't / doesn't ultimately pan out.

Oh, Hull are above us in the table. They're probably not THAT awful a side then... Does anyone have a new barrel? I seem to have worn the bottom out of this one.

If he said he thought Kozak was terrible, the next question would be "So why didn't you sub him?"

Surely you'd admit you're more likely to get an assist passing to Eden Hazard than you are passing to Jordan Bowery, and more likely to score a goal being played in by Juan Mata than you are by Ashley Westwood?

Have we really only lost to the "Top 4" away in the last year? If that's true, colour me impressed.

Con said he'd be scoring goals if we dominated games like Chelsea, and I'm inclined to agree with him here. It's much harder for him to get goals or assists without the vast attacking riches and possession that Chelsea enjoy. Not to say he's definitely as good as Ramires but just comparing stats is not a fair comparison.

You like your hyperbole, don't you? I like Bacuna but don't think comparisons with the best full-backs in the world will flatter him.

Offers something in the other two, though. I'll take that right now.

Delph is great, isn't he?

Before the rage starts, I think we should be careful not to write players off too soon. Bacuna was atrocious on his debut and KEA has also shown why there's sometimes rewards from sticking with players. However, he did not play well today. I really don't understand why Lambert didn't take him off? You can keep faith in a player without leaving them on the pitch.

Sorry, maybe I didn't explain it well. You said that when a owner buys the club, they are only buying the assets and not the debts - that's not necessarily true. The only way those debts can be removed from the club is if the person who made the loan cancels them. If your point was that Randy can cancel those debts at will so effectively the club has no debt then you're right about that. I just thought your first post was saying that whenever a football club was taken over, old debts of any kind were left with the old owner. Yup, this is a very simple summary of what I posted. If people want to disagree with that statement, they can read my massive wall of text which explains why. Saying "Randy has saddled the club with big debts" is literally true, but he's not done it in a particularly dangerous way and effectively all it has done is increase the money Randy has paid for the club.

There were some good points. We did get a point - I'm pretty convinced that last season we'd have conspired to lose it with some schoolboy defending. We got a clean sheet and our defence was decent - Bacuna in particular played well. Delph also put in a good performance. However 0-0 against Hull isn't a great result particularly as we play better away from home. We should be expecting better even without Benteke and the form of Wiemann and Kozak (and the fact we're still relying on J-Bowz to change a game) is rather depressing. If this had been served up under McLeish he'd have been slaughtered for it, but that's mostly because the previous six games would have involved us being spanked in the most depressing way possible. Lambert gets more slack because we we just beat Man City 3-2. We're allowed boring performances once in a while, let's just hope that it doesn't become a recurring theme.

Plus points: we got a point, the fact "Hull" has three Ls in the title of this thread made me laugh.

We shouldn't really be content with a 0-0 against Hull. It is better than nothing but we should be expecting better even with Benteke out.

To be fair, last year we'd have found a way to lose this.

I'm glad Bent scored. We're more likely to be able to sell him at the end of the season that way.

The worrying thing about that is it will encourage Tonev to stop passing.

Aston Villa, we score when we want.

I'm glad Tonev is on but I do think Bowery is the worst player in our entire squad.

No point writing a player off after a couple of bad games, but there's also no point in keeping them on when they aren't doing anything useful.

Tonev time? He certainly offers us a different way to lose the ball.

We only ever turn up in the second half. I have faith. I was sort of hoping that we might win a game at a canter at some point though.

That's not entirely accurate. If Lerner sells Villa he is selling both the assets and the debts. Generally the new owner will work out how much is necessary to clear the debt and deduct that from the price he's paying, so he ends up buying the net assets of the company...but that's not compulsory. Sometimes a company with large debts will be bought for £1 and the new owners then become responsible for the debt - this happened to Rover, for example.

I thought I'd make a contribution to the general discussion by providing a guide to "debt". Not all debt is created equal, so being "in debt" is much worse in some situations than others. It's a wall of text, but if you've got concerns about the debt that this or other clubs have then it should be worth reading. I've simplified this where possible, but if I've oversimplified it or just got some things plain wrong then please do correct me. I am a qualified accountant but I've not practiced for a few years and I don't specialise in M&A. 1) Leveraged Buyout: The type of debt that enrages supporters the most is that caused by a leveraged buyout - this is what the Glazers did to Man United. Basically the owners buy the club, but only put in a small amount of their own cash. The rest of the money is borrowed from a bank or an investment fund, and it usually comes at a very high interest rate and is secured on the club's assets. This is great for the banks lending the money (they make a lot of money from the high interest rates), but it's also great for the owners. The owners love it because they own all the shares and therefore the entire club, but only put in (for example) 10%-20% of the money. If they bought the club for £500m and it increases in value to £600m, the owners receive all of that extra £100m. If the club doubles its profits, the owners receive all of that gain too. The bank don't own the club, they've just lent money against it - like a mortgage on a house. It's rather less great for the club itself. The club has to pay the interest on the money the owners borrowed, which can be crippling - some of the money the Glazers borrowed was at 15%-17% interest rates. A more subtle danger is the fact that the owners are incentivised to maximise profit and club value as much as possible in the short term with no regard at all for the long term sustainability of the club, as they gain all of any value increase. However, if it all goes wrong, the club is left with massive debts at extremely high interest rates. At best, it ends up spending money on paying interest instead of being able to spend it on players. At worst, it ends up having to sell assets like the stadium or even going bankrupt entirely. A leveraged buyout is the owners taking a massive bet on the future of the club mostly using other people's money, so if you're a supporter it should concern you lots. 2) External Loans: This is any loan taken out by the club from anyone other than the owner. The bank loans in a leveraged buyout would technically fall into this category, but I've mentioned them separately because they are at unusually high interest rates. An external loan is conventionally at normal commercial interest rates and will cost much less each month to service than the loans I was talking about above. There's any number of reasons why a club may want money. They might take out loans to cover a new stadium, buying players or just to cover annual losses that a club is making each year. Whatever the reason, the bank will give the club a loan and it'll be secured against an asset the club owns like the stadium or future revenues such as season ticket sales. Again, if the club has too many loans then the club will be spending money servicing interest instead spending money on players. If a club totally runs out of money, the bank takes control of the asset that the loan is secured against and sells it to try and pay off the loan. If your club has a lot of these, you should worry. 3) Owner Loans: These are loans made by the club owner to the club. Legally they are identical to the external loans mentioned above, but in practice they are rather different for several reasons. The first reason for this is because the interest is payable to the owner and therefore the money doesn't leave the club and choke cashflow in the same way as normal loans. They reduce the profit the owner receives, but he receives that money in interest instead. If money is tight at the club then owners can just waive the interest payable, or invest the interest received straight back into the club. If the interest was paid to a bank it is gone for good. Secondly, they are secured against assets that the owner already owns. The owner therefore gets no added security for putting the money in as there's nothing extra for them to take control of if the club gets into difficulty. This is much better for the club - if the club goes bankrupt, the stadium and future cash flows of the club are still owned by the same person. There are two possibilities at that point: The owner liquidates the club, selling the assets and distributing the money raised to the people owed money (mostly himself). The owner sells the club as a going concern. The new owner gets a debt-free club complete with stadium etc, and the old owner gets the money raised from the sale but has to write off all the money he lost on his loans (therefore they lose money). Generally the second happens, as if a buyer is only paying slightly more than the value of the club assets then they're not taking much risk - they can always sell the assets to get most of the money back. A bankruptcy with bank loans is much more dangerous because the loans are secured against the most valuable assets of the company so they get cherry-picked out and sold, so what's left of the club is the rubbish nobody wants and it's therefore much less appealing for a buyer. Ultimately when the club is sold it does not matter to the previous owner whether money is received for the club purchase or for paying off the loans they put into the club, because both are owned by the same holding company so all the money ends up in exactly the same place. It's better for a club not to have these loans, but if debt is necessary then this is the best type (for the club). In practical terms they are almost interchangeable with the money an owner spent buying the club. It's a bit of an oversimplification, but you could consider Villa a debt-free club that Lerner bought for £190m rather than a club bought for £65m and with £125m of owner debt.

You're contradicting yourself. Either the club is going to make money this year and therefore it is already making money, or the club is going to lose money this year and therefore it is already losing money. Which is it? No I'm not. We don't know the figures yet for this year, currently based on the most recent figures we have the club isn't making money but I suspect it probably will turn a profit on the next results. No contradiction in the posts quoted above. I'm sure this argument is getting tiresome for everyone to read, so I'll make one final point here and then leave it alone. I don't see how you can't see the contradiction? There are two options: 1) The club makes a profit this year: If this is the case, the club is already making a profit this year and your second quote is incorrect. You can't argue with this. All the major increases in revenue or cost decreases that affect this year (reduced wage bill, TV rights, etc) are entirely predictable. Basic finance means the revenue accrues evenly through the year no matter when the cash is received or paid. The only possible thing that could throw this out of kilter is player transfers, but your first reply said you didn't think negative net transfer spend would be required. Therefore your second quote is wrong - the club is currently making money. 2) The club does not make a profit this year: If the club does not make a profit, then the first quote is wrong. Lerner will lose more money by holding the club longer, because he'll have to put more money in to cover the loss. It might sound like I'm just splitting hairs here, but I'm not. The fact that the club is making a profit is not public domain information does not mean that anyone who was interested in buying the club would not be aware of it. The club will be worth more right now if it's going to make profit this year. The increase in valuation won't have to wait until the end of the financial year. So if your assumptions about the club making profit this year are correct, your second quote and third quotes are incorrect. There's at least one contradiction at work there...but I'll leave it at that.