allani

Why let important facts like that interfer with other statistics?! The answer is 2016 in the League Cup - we lost 3-1. The one before that was 1992 in the league (lost 2-0), then 1990 in the league (also lost 2-0). We won the league match there in 1989 with Derek Mountfield scoring the only goal in a 0-1 away win. You then have to go back to 1964 for our previous away win there - also 0-1 in the League Cup. So Villa have only beaten Luton away once in my lifetime!! This will be the 13th time we've played them away during that time. Not stats that I would have guessed.

Come on Palace! New manager bounce would work nicely today please!

We've not won at Kenilworth Road for over 32 years. We've lost 9 of the last 11 away matches against Luton. Hopefully, more records for Unai to break!

Heck also did a lot in terms of raising revenues and improving the value of the club during his time in Philadelphia without increasing the stadium capacity. So "more seats" won't be his default answer to the question how do we improve our revenues.

100%. I think a lot of players and agents will have looked at the way we play, the way that Emery has developed players and the opportunity that players have to shine within the way we play and will have us high on their list of good clubs to go to - almost irrespective of whether we qualify for the CL or not. CL qualification would be the cherry on the cake for sure. On the flip side I think it will be interesting - my gut feel is that Emery and Monchi won't go near players who will "only" join us if we qualify for the CL. So I see qualification as less about allowing us to target more players and more about making our proposition even more attractive to players who we're already targetting. (I'm not sure I have explained that brilliantly)

I think you previously highlighted the key comment from Emery earlier. They sounded like the words of someone who was expecting the core of his team to stay in place and echoes similar sentiments expressed by other senior club officials. Obviously they can't say "we're definitely not selling anyone" or "we have to sell some of our best players this summer" but the way he spoke sounded (to me anyway) that he thought the former of those was closer to the likely reality than the latter.

Also I see that there's now also some media chat about Spurs possibly having to sell. I can't think why rumours about potential issues at Villa and Spurs are suddenly circulating given their position in the league in respect to a certain other club.

I think Digne will impact our team much more than some people seem to - he and Moreno offer really good options at LB depending on the opposition and is one place where the overall quality doesn't drop depending on who plays. I would be surprised in Sousa and Chrisene don't go out on loan again (at least until the New Year). But in general I agree with most of what you say.

I would be surprised if there is a single PL team that doesn't sell someone this summer.

I'd blanked him from my memory bank! Sending Ross to Australia was probably covered by the same guidelines that we used 150 odd years ago to send convicts down under - so probably doesn't help with the work permit side of things. I was thinking that we'd sent a young defender there too.

Particularly if Buendia and Mings are ready for the new season at something close to their previous levels.

Didn't we send someone on loan to a team in Australia a few years back? I can't remember who and maybe they had an Aussie passport. But that would suggest that it should be possible. As I said before I think it looks like it would have benefits for both the men's and women's teams.

I don't disagree. Branthwaite would (from what I have seen so far) be a great fit for the way that Emery wants to play. He'll add some aeriel power but not at the cost of compromising our ability on the ball / deck. He really does seem to have everything you'd want from a defender. But there will be a lot of teams after him and some will be able to offer a lot higher wages. But that doesn't mean that we don't have things that we can offer instead. It's a question of what he values more.

Given that a highly respected member of this forum reclused himself from discussions on the Adidas deal after saying that we were going to get a premier service - it seems pretty certain that we've got a very good deal much closer to Newcastle than Leeds. Our last CEO did a deal with Castore - Heck completed a deal with Adidas. Yes we're doing better on the pitch but we've signed with a much bigger firm, for a lot more money, with access to more retail outlets and will almost certainly get a better product. That is clearly progress.

I quite like the green kit. I don't think there would be a big drive to change the colours to claret and blue - and I also don't think that the owners are that fussed about branding everything the same unlike say the red Bull group or even (to an extent) the City group. How to Canberra usually go in the W League? This season it looks like there's not a great deal of difference between teams in 5th / 6th and the teams in 10th / 11th. Is that typical?

I think there is a divide between ROI for the club and ROI for the owners. FFP doesn't take into account that the club is worth at least 5 times what it was when the owners took over - which more than covers any accounting loss that the business may have made. Obviously there are fewer people who can buy a club for £500m rather than £50m so the risk associated with the owner walking away is higher. But that doesn't seem to worry the authorities when assessing clubs like City / Chelsea / PSG / etc. They might not go bust under their current owners but are they really viable businesses if the owners walk away? I think it is fair to say that Villa is a more viable option for new owners now that it was 5 years ago but that doesn't seem to count for anything under FFP.

I think the world and its dog will be trying to sign Branthwaite this summer. But I agree if we could get him he'd be a superb fit. He seems to be pretty good on the ball (so would fit in with our desire to play the ball out from the back) and is also good in the air. My Evertonian mate says that he needs to move from Everton asap because he could be a Rolls Royce type player but Everton will turn him into a tractor because of the way they play. He'd be great here but we'd face a huge battle to land him. That said Emery and CL football (if we can make it) should be two pretty big ticks on the "why go to Villa" checklist.

Because building a new stand means reducing the capacity for 2 seasons whilst it is being built and so is likely to reduce our match day revenue (even with the other measures) rather than increase it in the short term. Also it has to be remembered that the next 2 seasons are predicted to be the toughest period for clubs with regards to maximising their revenues because of the transition to the new FFP limits. Therefore, it is entirely possible that a decision that is wrong for the mid-long term is the right decision in the short-term. Half the debate on this site at the moment seems to be about the need to sell star players because we are going to miss our FFP targets and then the other half is why have we decided not to reduce our capacity next season and earn less money making it even harder to meet our targets next season? Yes ultimately I am sure we'll need more bums on seats but we need to find a way to do that which won't reduce our revenues for 2 seasons and mean that it's more likely we have to sell players just as we are building a team that is competitive. It is a bit of a Catch-22 situation really and one that highlights that the FFP rules aren't really working correctly. It absolutely should be possible for ambitious (or even less ambitious) owners to upgrade / expand their infrastructure to improve the club's ability to grow or operate more sustainably. Yet the short-term fixation on annual revenue figures seems to prevent that unless you have the luxury of being able to build on a new site, buy a newly-built stadium built for another purpose or have the ability to temporarily move into another big stadium.

I spent a lot of time defending Purslow too (seems to be a bit of a trend!). That said my gut feel at present is that Heck is able to get us in front of potential partners that Purslow just couldn't - or even if NSWE make the contact, Heck is better able to then continue and take things to the next level.

I think this is exactly what I was trying to say (maybe not very well). The CFO/Finance Director is already involved in meetings / decisions that are being made and part of that will be about FFP implications. But we don't need a seperate FFP compliance process because it's already implicit in the way that the business is run. FFP hasn't changed the fact that the financial aspect of any big decision needs to be properly assessed - it just sets some additional criteria to consider within that assessment.

I think that Monchi reports to the owners not to Heck. The response from the club certainly says that the PFO reports to ownership and the PBO reports to ownership. So if we sell Ramsey it will not be Heck's decision. Heck might have recommended it from a business point of view, but Monchi would have given a football perspective to the decision and ultimately responsibility for the decision sits with ownership.

I didn't mean to say they don't have an impact - I meant to say that person doesn't make the final call . We don't have someone sat in an FFP office who can just announce that we are selling Ramsey in June as it is the quickest way to hit our FFP targets. But there will be someone saying "hey guys we need to raise £x in the next 4 weeks or we're going to have a problem".

At the risk of repeating old discussions - how are the Atairos and Adidas deals not things to be impressed by? They both represent a significant shift in the type / level of organisation that we are partnering with and point to an ability to address the revenue imbalance between us and our rivals. I understand your frustrations on the crest and redevelopment but that doesn't mean that there aren't other good things happening off the pitch. There's a lot of stuff that seems very similar to what happened under Purslow (and this comment isn't directed at you) - after the decision to hire Gerrard it was like everything that the club did that was good was down to NSWE and everything we got wrong was pinned on Purslow. We seem to be following the same path again - the Atairos and Adidas deals were down to the owners and everything we don't like gets pinned on Heck.

OK - I read / interpretted the response in a completely different way. The way I have read the response is that there are no decisions that are made purely down to FFP and therefore there is no need to have someone akin to a President of FFP. FFP is just one of many considerations that are taken into account when making any decision. I'm sure that there is someone who is monitoring and re-forecasting our finances to review our ability to meet the FFP rules but that person does not make decisions that impact on the business or sporting side of things. I didn't think that it sounded like a flippant response at all.

No it doesn't. The logic points to us selling players whose value to the team is less than the cash value they would bring in by selling them offset by t he cost of bringing in a replacement. Bringing in a "home grown" player who will start the majority of our matches and perform at CL level will not be cheap.