allani

No problem. I think it's definitely been a difficult time for him (which was your general point). The speed of his rise and fall was pretty phenomenal and would take their toll on anyone. I really do hope that he gets a move to another Serie A team where he can rebuild his career a bit more slowly and with less pressure. Fiorentina,Torino or Genoa might be good options from a footballing perspective and taking finances out of the equation. Would be amazing for him to go to my "local" team Lecce but that would seem completely unrealistic. I still think he'll end up at a CL team in Italy eventually - but might just benefit by taking that "backwards" step first to give himself the best chance of playing regularly and being one of the main players.

He didn't really have a boyhood club. He was at Genoa, Fiorentina and Inter before joining Roma. Indeed one of the "issues" flagged when he was first spoken about as being potentially Roma's next Totti was that he could never be the next Totti because he wasn't born "Roma". I don't know what team he supported as a kid - mainly it seems to be whichever Serie C team his dad was playing for at the time.

Sorry as someone who follows Roma this is patently not true. I think it is possibly true that some thought that he'd not re-captured his pre-injury form. However, he had put in some excellent performances in the build up to the summer and let's not forget he scored a hat-trick in the quarter final and the winning goal of the final in the Conference League. The issue was that he and Mourinho fell out over negotiations around his new contract (there may have been a prelude to this with Zaniolo possibly being frustrated that he was being asked to play a different way and Jose wanting to impose his style on the way that everyone played). Jose had just delivered a European title to Roma and looked like he might be bringing more success to the club. So when Mourinho turned on Zaniolo - he had a higher standing among fans than the player. Mourinho (like most bullies) was also quite good at building support for himself and against Zaniolo by picking up on specific incidents that supported his case that Zaniolo wasn't as good as he thought he was (by asking to be the highest paid player). Had Zaniolo not asked for a new contract or Mourinho had not taken his refusal to sign a lower offer than he's asked for as a personal slight - then I think it is highly likely that Zaniolo would have started the following season with a key role in Roma's team (rather than becoming more marginalised). The key point in the escalation of the whole saga was the rumour that Zaniolo wasn't putting in the same effort, was feigning injuries and that eventually he had refused to play or train for the club until his new contract had been agreed (I've heard various stories about whether this was actually the case, whether he'd been dropped / then told to stay away "to recover" from training by Mourinho {possibly one of his staff} or did genuinely havs a series of slight injuries). That's really what caused the issue with the Ultras - with some then turning up at his house to "make their feelings known". At which point things had broken down to the point that they couldn't be easily fixed. As an aside it is interesting to note that since De Rossi has taken over there's talk about Roma playing / training with more freedom and players looking "happier". So it is hard to say whether Zaniolo or Mourinho or both are more at fault here.

Yeah I can't quite tell whether he thinks that everyone watching is 5, he's bored or he's just taking the pi55. Which is a shame because actually he makes some interesting points (as well as some inane points).

This video actually perfectly captures everything about the "current / Purslow" badge that makes me dislike it. Basically, it just shows that last year's effort was a "paint by numbers" exercise - (1) make it round, (2) simplify the central image and (3) make it two colours. Exactly the same as so many other clubs are doing. Any one of those on its own would probably be fine - (1) I like our 1982 badge, (2) I like how Roma and Wolves have simplified their central image and made it a symbol connected with them and (3) I do think that the claret and blue looks much sharper than the light blue and yellow pairing. I dislike the fact that we turned round the lion - it looks less like the Villa lion. So it feels like it's lost its identity without really forming something new and iconic. I'm not a big fan of the Lerner crest - the colours are too washed out. But this video has also helped me realise why I quite like the more detailed lion that has been "leaked" recently (ignoring the rest of the badge). It's very definitely doing something different to the norm and I think combines a definite nod to the past (with it being more "intricate") but yet it feels like a modern take on that. More importantly it is "our" lion and so I think will stand on its own better. I'm still not a fan of the yellow on light blue though. But the yellow lion in its own would look great on a claret background - whereas changing it to claret so that it appears better on the badge would then make it much harder to use a claret lion on its own. So it's not as simple to fix as it might appear.

Interesting that 9 of the badges (10 if we'd used ours) are round. Our shield is a different shape (even to the other shields) which helps it stand out.

Not just buying or selling players. You've also got to think about whether a major international brand would be happy signing an expensive, multi-year sponsorship deal with a club that have just said they might be at risk of either selling players or getting a 10 point penalty the next season. I've said from the start that there are all kinds of reasons why Heck might not be as transparent as many people would like for all kinds of legal, commercial, confidentiality reasons. It's a difficult balance between building good relations with the fans and not compromising deals / the strength of the club's bargaining position. I would almost always sacrifice a bit of the former for the latter. Especially when NSWE, Unai and Monchi have done so much in terms of building up credit in the bank with the fans. Actions speak louder than words. I don't think he's got enough credit for the Atairos and Adidas deals which are more significant to the immediate / long term future of the club than a new badge. Heck is probably never going to be hugely popular (as he will be the person signing of ticket price rises, etc) but I suspect he's probably pretty thick-skinned and that he'll be more interested in ensuring that he's doing what NSWE have paid him to do which is to basically balance the books better.

Not just buying or selling players. You've also got to think about whether a major international brand would be happy signing an expensive, multi-year sponsorship deal with a club that have just said they might be at risk of either selling players or getting a 10 point penalty the next season. I've said from the start that there are all kinds of reasons why Heck might not be as transparent as many people would like for all kinds of legal, commercial, confidentiality reasons. It's a difficult balance between building good relations with the fans and not compromising deals / the strength of the club's bargaining position. I would almost always sacrifice a bit of the former for the latter. Especially when NSWE, Unai and Monchi have done so much in terms of building up credit in the bank with the fans. Actions speak louder than words. I don't think he's got enough credit for the Atairos and Adidas deals which are more significant to the immediate / long term future of the club than a new badge. Heck is probably never going to be hugely popular (as he will be the person signing of ticket price rises, etc) but I suspect he's probably pretty thick-skinned and that he'll be more interested in ensuring that he's doing what NSWE have paid him to do which is to basically balance the books better.

That's kind of my point. The things they have done are the very opposite of sustainable - same as Chelsea giving players 8 or 9 year long contracts. It "fixes" a short-term issue by creating a much bigger long-term issue. It is more financially irresponsible than the way that clubs that appear at the bottom of the list are behaving. As I have said elsewhere we're down as having recorded a loss and yet the value of the club has increased by at least fives times due to the owners improving the club at almost every level. Anyone suggesting that NSWE are putting the future of Villa at risk need their heads wobbling. FFP is a good idea (if done properly) but the way it is currently implemented (and all the advantages that the big clubs exploited before the regulations came in) is out of whack.

The stadium costs wouldn't be attached to our reported losses. You also have to remember that whilst we've "lost" £130m according to the info published early - NSWE have actually made something like £400m in terms of the value of Aston Villa. So it's very much a paper loss. A new stadium would also significantly increase the paper value of the club - i.e. if the club is worth £500m on its current site then it would be worth significantly more in a brand new stadium that offered access to significantly more revenue streams. NSWE probably aren't looking too closely at annual p/l (other than to check that we're complying with regs) because they're more interested in increasing the value of their investment. There are countless businesses that have only ever made big losses but have sold / floated for a huge amount because people value the overall proposition more than its track record of p/l. This is why I think the report is completely crazy. We've got owners who have quadrupled the value of their investment being flagged as "at risk" whilst a club that has ****ed everything and is selling off everything they possibly can to stay afloat are being lauded as the pinnacle of FFP propriety. It is just nuts.

It does have to be said that I'm struggling to see a way in which (regardless of issues like is there enough space at our current site, would we get the planning permission, etc) we can expand / renovate VP without taking a revenue hit over a number of seasons as certain stands would need to be closed (fully or partially) to allow that work to be done - without us either moving away from VP temporarily whilst that work is done (but there aren't exactly a lot of friendly 40,000+ seater stadiums nearby and would 40,000 people be happy having to drive / take the train to Wembley or Twickenham in the meantime - just as an example of stadia that might be willing to host us) or moving away from VP permanently so those facilities can be developed separately. Unless of course the PL / UEFA issue some much firmer "guidelines" about the secondary impact on revenue of major infrastructure development projects.

My reason for suggesting this is that should the costs of the new stadium over-run then effectively those risks would (in the short term) sit with Comcast and not us. So if additional expenses were incurred then we'd be less exposed to having to explain them away / avoid them showing somewhere within the bounds of FFP. It just puts an extra barrier between us and any risk associated with the infrastructure projects (which are notorious for over-running). I suspect that the Everton findings have possibly spooked senior officials at many clubs because there was a lot less tolerence shown than might have been expected. As a result I do think that clubs will be a little bit less gung-ho about their forecasts for expected league placing, progress in European / domestic cups, etc. Because for every forecast that you get wrong you'll need to find a way of very quickly balancing that elsewhere. Everton got it VERY wrong in a lot of ways. But I think people will also be looking at Forest and questioning how selling a player in August for £10m more than was offered in June was an act of financial impropriety (which is what FFP is supposed to prevent).

I do think that this (even if it is close to being true) paints a very different spin on some of the "crises" that the club are facing and how the landscape might have changed significantly in the last two years - especially when you take into consideration that we seem to be more at risk of missing the UEFA rules than the PL rules (which wouldn't have been such a big deal 2 seasons ago when we were in the bottom half of the table) and the fact that the Everton ruling has set a pretty strong precedence in terms of the severity of any breach AND that trying to appeal that the "final straw" was an infrastructure payment issue, will hold no water if you've been negligent / remiss elsewhere. (1) Firstly, it offers a different perspective on why a costly rebrand might not be the best thing to be doing at the moment. I think this also might explain why the new badge we think we are getting will look so similar to the Lerner badge (i.e. it's easier to live with two similar badges in the short term so we can take more time to rebrand the stadium, etc). (2) It offers a very different view on why reducing capacity in the next two seasons could have a very big impact on our ability to meet our short-term FFP commitments (even if long term increasing capacity will have significant advantages). I don't quite know how we balance that off because the case for increasing capacity closer to our rivals seems pretty solid. But we can't afford to risk 10 point penalties or selling key players to balance the difference. (3) It does offer a possible reason why some of the communications around (1) and (2) might have been a little less than fully transparent. I don't think we'd want the club to be saying that the rebrand and redevelopment projects were off because they might cause us to breach FFP. (4) It would also raise question marks about the performance of the club in certain areas and explain why we might be clearing out some departments and bringing in people that our senior team have worked with before. (Note that this doesn't address allegations around possible breaches of employment law - but maybe does imply that (some) people who've been asked to leave might well have been asked to do so because our numbers are so adrift.) (5) Maybe it also explains why we've had a bit of "radio silence" deliberate or not from the club - because actually the attention is on other matters. I'm not saying that any of these are definitely true by the way but it does imply that maybe there are factors that the club have been focussed on that maybe they don't want to be discussing too openly / transparently at the moment. I can certainly see why Heck might be spending more time trying to line up more deals rather than liasing with fan groups about reverting to something similar to the last badge we had. It does also suggest that there's something wrong with FFP when most independent views are that we've generally bought pretty well, strengthened our team pretty sensibly (lots of people talk about how cheap some of our key players were compared to their current value) and that we've done brilliantly well on the pitch. I would be amazed if anyone genuinely believes that our owners are acting rashly or beyond their means and that Barcelona of the pinnacle of what a well-run club should look like.

You know there is something seriously long with the FFP rules when Barcelona are showing an almost 3 times greater profit than any other club on the list. Absolute bull****.

Agreed. It all smacks of something bigger being in the offing somewhere / somehow. The potential involvement of extra parties also probably makes it even more difficult for anything to be openly communicated almost until it gets to the point that it needs to for legal / contractual reasons.

Unless they are the kind of projects that Aston Villa can afford to develop bit our new "indirect owners" with big pockets and relevant expertise can then pursue their own development projects and then lease them to Villa? I do think we'll see several of the things that have been implemented in Philadelphia applied to Villa Park in the short-term as they will allow revenue to be raised for relatively little outlay (if any - e.g. my understanding is that Comcast actually paid for the manufacture and installation of the scoreboard at the Wells Fargo stadium) and quite quickly. But I agree that the deal makes even more sense with a bigger project. I don't entirely know how easy it would be for Comcast to build a multi-sports / leisure / entertainment stadium close to Aston and then lease it to Villa. Would that make the process harder than us doing it? Does it really fit with the spirit of FFP? But then does FFP really fit in with the spirit of fair competition if clubs are worried about investment projects that might inadvertently hit on FFP issues? I don't know but it does kind of feel like the Comcast thing does give us more options to explore that could de-risk things for us. If we are that close on FFP for this year - it certainly explains why the club wouldn't be able to afford any reduction in capacity over the next two seasons even if that means a bigger capacity from then on. And it also explains why Heck wouldn't be able to directly say that and would have to announce another reason for the redevelopment being put on hold. In which case fans pushing / demanding a clearer explanation might actually be putting the club in more difficulty than we should be?

The FFP regulations being set at a different timeline to the transfer windows are going to cause a real issue - with poor clubs being forced into selling assets to rich clubs for way below their market value. It's going to create an artificial market almost the reverse of insider trading. Clubs are going to effectively hold other clubs to ransom because they know that they could face a points deduction if they don't take a ridiculous deal that results in players being sold well below market value. Another example of FFP being poorly implemented in terms of protecting the integrity of football for all. The two transfer window option is already a bad decision (as it forces clubs to stockpile players because they can't afford to not have cover for injuries sustained outside the window) and this is going to make it worse.

Both Everton and Forest (and allegedly Wolves) have ended up in this position and been punished for holding out for better offers at the end of the summer. I think there will be a lot of clubs circling for blood trying to land a bargain for any clubs on the brink of the FFP limit. So the chances of selling anyone before the end of June and not getting mugged off will be remote. I think it is fair to say that if we has to sell a player in June we wouldn't be able to get better than 50% of their value because (a) it is unlikely that other clubs will have significant FFP headroom to fund a large purchase and (b) our bargaining position will be incredibly weak - if a club offers say £40m for Luiz and we say that we want £80m then they'll just say fine - take the 10 point deduction, good luck.

To be honest if the club have gambled everything on 6th being a bad season then we'll be in deep **** sooner rather than later. We're not the 6th best team on paper. Planning on us always outperforming is hugely risky / dangerous / stupid. This is exactly the type of behaviour that FFP was supposed to prevent. I would be very surprised if our owners have gambled in this way. I think they are ambitious not reckless. I do think that this might highlight why a huge change is required to the business side of the club - it is clear that generating revenue is more critical to the club's ambition than ever. If we can't improve revenues in both the short-term and the longer-term then we'll struggle to compete on the pitch.

We've not seen most of the replacements yet - so for example we don't know that Gauci will be an upgrade on Olsen yet (although it will be hard to imagine that he wouldn't be!). But I agree that January was very positive in terms of starting the process. I was mainly saying that we need to be careful about wanting to clear out too many non-starters at once because they need replacing and (as we've seen with several clubs this season) injuries / long term injuries are likely to remain an issue given the number of games that are being played, the amount of additional time being played and the lack of "breaks" during the year for players to recover. We've been unlucky with the number of long-term injuries we have had but there are lots of teams who have had 7 or 8 players out at a time. I think that will become more "normal" so it will become even more important to have squad depth.

Yeah but in the past we didn't (indirectly) own the secondary ticketing platform. There are frequent debates on this forum about how **** our ticket office is. I suspect that we've got better access to more people who have experience of implementing a secondary platform now and that (at a senior level) there would be more drive to push through the changes. Also given that we'd have an (indirect) ownership link with the platform provider - then you would imagine that we'd get better terms with regard to how much of the ticket price we keep than we would with a third party provider - especially if Comcast are looking to use us as a way to break into the UK / European market (I don't know how big their ticketing platform is on this side of the Atlantic). I am glad that Fanatics are out - but I think we'd be in a much stronger position through our ties with Comcast to look at utilising specialist providers to reduce costs without necessarily losing a big chunk of the potential profits. We were nothing but just another client to Fanatics (and with our league standing probably not a massively important one). Whereas we are part of the Comcast universe allbeit with some clever jiggery-pockery around actual ownership ties.

The initial announcement specifically said it was going to be used on infrastructure projects. The behaviour of our owners to date, the recent comments from NS about owning a football team not being about making money and it becoming a passion and the net worth of both owners (for whom £50m would equate to a relatively small percentage of their paper wealth) - doesn't make me think that they are cashing in the cheque for themselves. I think this is all about getting another huge partner (Comcast) engaged with the club in the most advantageous way possible (for NSWE, Villa and Comcast) rather than our owners looking to cash in some chips.

I am beginning to start thinking that maybe extending the loan of Lenglet and trying to sell Diego Carlos might be better? I thought Lenglet looked pretty solid (on the whole) against Fulham playing alongside Pau. Whereas Carlos just looks like he's always about to do something a bit silly (either in terms of getting himself sent off or giving the ball away in a dangerous position). Given that Konsa and Mings (hopefully) would likely go into the starting XI, Lenglet as a backup CB would be OK. That would allow us to recover some funds by selling Carlos back to Spain - although I am not sure how that would work from an FFP calculation compared to Lenglet's loan fee / wages. Maybe having Lenglet, Pau and Mings impacts our CB balance - but as has been said before people don't make a big deal about teams having lots of right footed CBs, it only evere seems to come up if teams have a possible imbalance of left footed players. The challenge (as ever) is that how can you clear out "deadwood" and replace them with better players without there being a huge disparity between the funds you get coming out and the funds you need to spend to replace them. We've struggled with squad depth this season and whilst a number of the players you mention haven't played any / many minutes - we do need to ensure that if we are playing CL or Europa League football next season we can rotate our players more. There won't be as many matches where we can throw in some kids / backup players without them potentially being exposed.

Comcast own the sports stadium in Philadelphia and implemented a number of projects for raising revenue around the stadium (naming rights to the scoreboard, other parts of the stadium, etc), they also own a ticketing company (which all the teams using the stadium now use) and also are heavily involved in sports media / broadcasting. So you can see why they would be of interest for us to partner with given their considerable experience of revenue generation within the sports arena. My gut feel is that Comcast will become a major vehicle for us expanding our revenues through a number of the channels in which they have expertise. Rather than us paying for all these services the Atairos deal potentially (indirectly) means that Comcast have skin in the game and so there is a bigger incentive for them to charge us less but deliver more. I remember at the time of the initial announcement there was a slightly odd comment about Atairos buying a minority ownership of VSports and that the ownership of Aston Villa remained unaffected. Which does make me wonder whether that has been done so that there is no direct ownership issue between Comcast and Villa - making it easier for Comcast or their subsiduaries to conclude deals with Villa without their being a "conflict of interest" debate? I would be quite surprised if we don't move our ticketing platform or find ourselves with some new shirt / ground sponsors in the near future. And that of course doesn't touch on how the £100m will be used on infrastructure projects. You'd imagine some of that will be spent on developing some of the shared academy facilities in Africa, etc. But could VSports pay for some of the developments around VP (e.g. shop, additional venue space) and then lease them to Villa? That would seem to de-link us from the initial expenses (whether or not they might be taken into account by FFP) but still allow us to claim any additional revenue / profits on our balance sheet. Meanwhile VSports gets rental income to balance their books and to fund other projects benefitting us and other teams within the VSports network.

Although I think that Leeds Utd also have an average spend per fan per match that is considerably higher than Villa's. Obviously the Sky 6 have access to the "global tourist fans" that you mention. But our spend per person is (assuming the table published above is still more or less correct) more than 30% lower than Southampton, Brentford, Brighton, West Ham, Newcastle and Leeds. West Ham possibly have the bonus of the Olympic Stadium to thank for that and maybe the Newcastle figures have been further inflated since their CL qualification and state ownership. But I don't think we can dismiss Leeds earning almost 40% more (possible excuse being first time in the PL for a while?) or Palace, Wolves, Brentford and Brighton doing a better job. I don't think they get more "out of town" fans and I don't think that they would have a lot more access to a fan base with significantly more disposal income. To rival the Sky 6 obviously we need a sustained period of time in / around the top of the league, qualifying for European football, etc. But it still seems like there is lots that we can do to raise our match day income without "ripping off" fans who go every week. Of course they won't be spending £100 every week in the club shop - but there must be ways of improving the services provided to either encourage people to arrive / leave a little earlier or spend more at half-time (the fact that so many people post on this forum about not being able to buy a beer or pie at half-time is a pretty damning indictment that we're not making it easy enough for fans to spend money that they would be willing / happy to spend).