Hughes

12 minutes ago, YLN said:

Undo it. Just undo it. As soon as possible. Now even. Now would be good. Don't think about it. Say, 'having consulted with the fanbase at large, there being an overwhelming appetite for protest this weekend, the walkout on Sunday against Spurs will go ahead as planned'. Don't say 'we' have decided the protest will go ahead. Enough of 'we'. The protest is bigger than you now. You don't get to own it. You get to facilitate it or **** it up. 

Absolutely agree. This had starting to get some real momentum.  Continue!!

Does anyone know what happened to Michelsen? It's a shame he stopped posting.

He found another kind of love, got married and now has a little kid. But he is still very much active, both on VT, meeting up in Oslo for matches and going to Villa Park and away matches - right Michelsen?   There are quite a few Norwegians on VT from what I can see, and at least 500 paying members in the Norwegian supporters' club (apparently the largest Foreign Villa supporters' Club apart from China...!) http://www.villans.no/

For matches on TV in Oslo, I believe Villa fans go to different pubs , so rarely a huge group of Villa fans in one place. Last night I think we were 6-7 guys at Tempest in Oslo,

Swedish article about Villa and the Grealish family

 

http://www.aftonbladet.se/sportbladet/kronikorer/erikniva/dokument/article20881143.ab

That is one fantastic article.

I work with a Cov fan and in general he's a good chap. Apart from when you get on to Football / Villa. It really gets his backup, they REALLY hate Villa don't they.

True story (long post, sorry): some years back I was driving on the West Cost in Norway with my wife and 2 year old kid. While waiting for a ferry I started speaking to an English guy. I asked about his tattoo and it was "Coventry City, son". As it happened I had been to the Ricoh just a few weeks before that so we talked and he was, well, nice enough. He offered to pay the entire fare for us and our car and went away to get it fixed. I asked my wife "should I tell him", and in her almighty wisdom adviced against it. In my almighty stupidness I decided against the advice and told him "you know, I am an Aston Villa fan". In front of my wife and 2 year old he turned completely grey and shouted "Aston Villa??!!! I fu***ing hate Aston Villa!!" Then he stormed off to his car, went in and never spoke to me again. All at a ferry waiting lot on the west coast of Norway... The idiot had already paid the fare for us. How I laughed...

Kwan never mentioned that he was this 84 year old Macedonian fella and Enda was on the wind up.

Was  Enda on the Wind-up? You sure? About Illitch: In 2006, inspired by a veteran returning to civilian life after losing both of his legs in war, Ilitch founded the Little Caesars Veterans Program to provide honorably discharged veterans with a business opportunity when they transition from service or seek a career change. Ilitch received the Secretary's Award from the U.S. Department of Veterans affairs for this program in 2007; it is the highest honor given to a civilian by the department. Today there are 50 Little Caesars Veteran franchisees who have applied more than $1.5 million in benefits.

 

Maybe a stretch but there could easily be a link here to one certain Mr. Krulak and Randy himself has been heavily involved in US army stuff.

That Thomson guy is a Cambridge graduate. So is Lerner. Anyone who knows if they were there at the same time?

I understand why IC has been suspended, reasonable explenations have been provided. But what has Karsa done to merit suspension? Taking ICs side would surely not be enough?

The Villa WM police twitter account said the closest Away pub to the ground is the Arkles; don't know if it would be suitable for kids though as I have never been sorry.

Thanks, the Arkles it is then. Seems pretty close to the ground!

Any suggestions for pubs near Anfield where the Villa fans will be? I am bringing my 8 year old son. By the way, I am staying in Liverpool at Radisson Blue and the Villa are staying here as well. Only seen KEA so far, though...

Considering VT has got a lot of threads where members are describing anal sex, sex with their relatives, doing illegal drugs and more; what is wrong with this thread? By the way, I'm Norwegian so I am loaded.... :-)

Still ridiculous to suggest that results do matter? FFS, I do not care that much if we loose one or two pre-season matches but look at who we have played and look at the results. It does not fill you with confidence, or what?

Yes, I signed up last year. Had trouble getting signed up there, took like 1-2 months before I could log in. Then I browsed a little bit, checked it out and such. Then I had trouble logging in again and kinda gave up honestly. I live in Lillestrøm though, so yeah not really far away. I would love to go see some games though, that is for sure

I have sent you a PM.

The kind of kit release some would love (Augsburg). It is only in Norwegian but I guess the pictures do not need translation.

m.db.no/2013/07/11/sport/fotball/augsburg/kroppsmaling/draktlansering/28148017/

(NSFW)

 

Lambert out!

Was just about to say this. Absolutely disgraceful stuff - this is the lowest I've ever felt as a Villa fan. Chelsea and Bradford were nothing compared to this. LAMBERT OUT!

 

jeeez, not at all what I tried to say and you know it. Thanks for contributing in a mature way.

 

 

Ridiculous. If we lose every pre season game then pick up a decent number of points during our tough start to the league will you still be crying then?

If we then go on losing to Bradford over a two leg tie I think I will. It is not about this single result today, it's about this Club not having a winning mentality, as shown over many years. Creating an attitude where not winning is not acceptable is the only way to change that, and that as to start in pre-season. That should make any Villa fan cry IMO.

No.

Just no.

care to elaborate?

 

 

So we don't have a winning in mentality? Where were you the last few months of the season when we beat every team around us that we needed to then? QPR, Reading, Stoke, Sunderland, Norwich and West Ham to ensure survival. Including late winners at Stoke and Norwich. The majority of fans are very positive about the villa at the minute and can see the improvement in the team since the turn of the year. Don't think you've thought this through at all. 

 

Believe it or not, I am actually more optimistic before this season than for many years (at least until the CB TR came up). Maybe I have not thought this through but I at least thought that this was a discussion board where opinions and views did not have to be on a PhD level every time. Ah well, I will leave it at that.   

we wll sell Benteke for X, I see no way back now. We will re-invest parts of that X in two or three players, of which one or two may work and one dont. And that will be one of two reasons why we cannot compete as a Club - the first reason being that we have not got the financial muscle to compete and because of that our only hope is get younger players, hope they succeed and to keep our best players and develop a team over time. But as history during the last years have shown, we are not able to do that and Benteke is just another example.

Ridiculous. If we lose every pre season game then pick up a decent number of points during our tough start to the league will you still be crying then?

If we then go on losing to Bradford over a two leg tie I think I will. It is not about this single result today, it's about this Club not having a winning mentality, as shown over many years. Creating an attitude where not winning is not acceptable is the only way to change that, and that as to start in pre-season. That should make any Villa fan cry IMO.

No.

Just no.

care to elaborate?

Mods; if better placed elsewhere, please feel free to remove, merge or whatever.

 

I see lots of VT'ers proclaiming that pre-season results are not important and that pre-season is "all about fitness". Obviously, I agree that it is important, but it is not everything. In my opinion, results do matter - quite simply because it could say quite a bit about a winning mentality. To me, it does not matter whether we are pre-season, off-season or playing a PL match, the ultimate goal of every game should be to win. Villa have for years, again in my opinion, been troubled by an attitude that, "it does not really matter", "at least we got a good run out and improved our fitness", we got close" etc. This applies not only to pre-season but in general. We as fans and the Club as such have in my view become used to being mediocre. Where is the winning mentality? We hardly see ManU or Chelsea loosing, or even drawing, many  pre-season games, do we? (do not bother finding examples of where they have lost - you know what I mean). Why? Well, I am sure it is partly because they have for years have a mentality where mediocrity is not accepted. You play to win, that's it.

 

Now, I am not predicting the end of the world because we fail to beat a 5th Level German team. No reason to panic based on one result, and no reason to describe me as a drama queen etc. Today was not just a one-off result - we are too often also in competitive matches losing or drawing where we really should have won. Again; the mentality and approach have been not good enough on too many instances. How many times have we been knocked out of "easy" European games (Rapid Wien is not a very good team, trust me). Bradford anyone? Doncaster? Losing at home in PL to bottom of the League teams? it has been going on for years. In order to change this, it has to start in pre-season, really instilling a winning mentality and an attitude that only winning is good enough. Thus, I do not buy into this "results do not matter stuff". They do, and to us they should matter more than to others because we are behind a lot of teams with respect to having the right mentality. And, as for today's game;  Lederhosen SV or whatever should be a team which we should comfortably beat, even if all Villa players were called off the beach with one day's notice. It's 5th Level FFS, 1-1 is simply not good enough, pre-season or not. And, they are in pre-season too. We need to be much more focused on results.

 

baggies voted no too, i think us, fulham and them suggested that it limited our appeal to foreign investment and made it harder to sell the club, on that basis i dont know why everton voted yes

 

its the death of competitive prem football / start of a european super league, the problem is the likes of us a few years back and everton come close to getting 4th, spurs get 4th and even when the likes of wigan give utd a good game we are told what a great competitive league the prem is, utter bollocks, if you are lucky then its a 2 horse race for the title most seasons, this will only make it worse

 

it makes it **** pointless, in a week when utd sign a deal worth £160m for their training kit the prem decides on rules that limit spending to earnings, i take it wigan and norwich and some of the other smaller clubs who voted yes werent bothered that utd's official japanese paint partners pay them more than their main shirt sponsor...

 

and thats before you start looking at how much the top 4 rake in from CL prize money, £40m just for turning up in the group stages? plus the addiitonal sponsorship money it brings, take away roman's cash and chelsea still had a £100m headstart on us last summer so how is that "fair"

 

what can we do? to be fair to faulkner he's got us some cash in, but on the pitch we have years of young / milner type deals to look forward to, we take a gamble on a player, turns out great, leaves us for a top 4 club who can pay him wages that we simply cant because of these restrictions, benteke will be next and he wont be the last

 

what they should have done is enforced the 25 man squad rule and then used that as a basis for controlling spending, maximum wage caps for the 25 being the easiest, IMO its not yaya toure signing for city for silly money thats killing the prem its their subs / reserves not palying and still being on silly money when they should be playing every week for someone else

Thanks, good post. However:

If we voted against because it makes it harder to sell the club, does that mean Randy is selling? Would be interesting if true.

From replies it looks like the minor clubs voted for in order to shut Championship clubs out, whereas the top/biggest clubs voted for because they want to reinforce their dominance. Fine, but where does that leave us? Leaving the possibility that Randy wants to sell aside, does our vote not mean one out of three:

1) Randy was looking to make big investments into Villa out of his own money, and the new rules will prevent that. Does not really seem likely, but who knows.

2) Villa voted against because the rules do not go far enough, as you say; there would be alternatives that would perhaps be more effective and more radical.

3) The rules will hit us as we will find ourselves in violation (?) and face the risk of sanctions.

I did not start this thread to discuss whether the new rules are good or bad as such, but to discuss why Villa voted against. There surely must have been thorough assessments by Randy and the board before the vote was cast and that reasoning would be, I believe, extremely interesting to have knowledge of as it must say quite a bit about how Randy is looking at the future. So, why?

I genuinely want to understand why we vote against. Granted, these rules may favor ManU, Pool and Arsenal as they have substantial turnover and income (but the 52 million wage cap will apply to them as well). However, I would have thought that this should be beneficial to us, at least over time, as we should be able to increase our income and because these rules should avoid another Man City / Chelsea popping out of nowhere.

Maybe because voting against it is the right thing to do.

Ok, why?

Understood; good for ManU. But is it therefore bad for Villa? Being realistic, we are not challengig ManU anyway and we should (and have historically not been anything more) be able to challenge for a top 6 place. In my mind these rules may, over time, make that possible. ManU is not our yardstick so I do not care that much about them.

becuase it just keeps the rich way ahead of the others.

it would never be beneficial to a club like us

all the clubs with big stadiums and sponsorship deals would have more money to spend

This.

So have Villa voted against because the rules do not go far enough or because Randy does not want FFP rules at all? We have shown that we cannot compete under the current (non) rules so I would have thought that this was a step in the right direction. Maybe small and flawed step, but still better than status quo.