allani

Actually until the FA find us guilty of not following due process then this isn't evidence / legitimate proof.

By the same token he could come out and announce a massive shirt sponsorship deal with an elite level organisation who once did a deal with NS or WE and some people would say that Heck deserves minimal credit because it was probably NSWE who made the deal and Heck just needed to sign it.

I voted him for MOTM (tough on Ollie who scored twice). But Pau just makes us purr. So calm on the ball, such a great range of passing and it was noticeable today that he's getting a bit more physical too.

Apologies if already stated elsewhere but that was apparently our 10th straight league win against teams from London. I hope we can add Spurs to the list in a few weeks!

I thought Pau and Lenglet looked like they had a decent understanding today. I am probably close to putting Lenglet ahead of Carlos at the moment. But obviously Mings or Konsa would be a huge plus.

That's a big stretch. Moreno scored and the only people who think he was offside were the linesman and the VAR official. The stream I watched said it was a shocking call and questioned the placement of the lines. Then Ollie was clean through in the perfect position (for him) to shoot and he gets taken out. Penalty and a possible red card. The two possible penalties against Pau the attacker is running to the byeline and definitely doesn't have a clear chance of scoring. I agree with your point about it not being a conspiracy against us - the stream I was watching said that they thought VAR didn't want to embarrass a young ref in his first PL game and so were keen to back his onfield decisions to give him some confidence.

Been a while since I sweated over a 4-1 win as much as that one. Two absolutely shocking VAR decisions. But the boys dug deep. 3 more points and 1 more match out of the way.

The line from the defender looks like it is coming from the middle of his foot though. It's a poor decision.

No idea how that goal was given offside. The lines were all over the place. Terrible decision.

Well people have been saying we need a new RB....

I don't think you get special dispensation for breaching FFP rules in a season by saying that you only did it so that you'd have more money the following season. If we are £50m short on FFP (which I don't think we are) then splashing out more money isn't the answer (even if in the long term it would be beneficial).

On the flip side it also goes to show that you can disagree entirely with someone on one issue (say the badge or the NS redevelopment ) and yet be completely aligned on others. I find it really positive that there are people who I can hold diametrically opposite views with on one point (but have mainly civil discussions with them anyway!) and yet be fully united on a point on a different thread 2 minutes later. I can only think of a couple of people who I actually just find annoying on everything (but haven't blocked them yet because I still live for the day that they post something positive or that I can agree with!). I also like the fact that there are very few people who I agree with on everything. Too much of the virtual world is an echo chamber where you only hear what will reinforce what you believe to be true. Overall this forum gets the balance and tone of discussions about right - except maybe in the match day thread but hey that's football!

My point is that I have been through two massive restructures in my career. In both cases those that liked what was being proposed would see things as being "hard messages" and those that didn't would describe the events as "incompetent, aggressive arseholes.....". In my experience it turned out that in one case the people driving the change were ****, everyone left and the company went backwards rapidly. In the other case the exact opposite happened. But both times the proportion of people in either camp were almost identical. Just to complete the story - the first time I was definitely in the "this change is going to be great camp" and then was hugely disappointed that it turned into a complete **** show run by people who apparently talked a good game but didn't have a ****ing clue. I left that company pretty quickly afterwards and found one that actually did do all the things that they said that could / would. The second time I was much more sceptical (once bitten, twice shy) and the guy leading the show was an American guy who I ****ing loathed. Turns out the change was brilliant and the guy ended up being one of the best people I have ever worked with in my career.

Exactly this. I am also sceptical that some of the things being used to "back up" some of the very serious allegations are actually issues at all: 1) Emery and Monchi have also replaced senior people in their "team" with people that they have worked with extensively. It is not unusual for this to happen. 2) There have to be massive questions about how our revenues are so far behind other clubs of a similar stature (even accounting for our recent league positions) - so there have to be some questions about how performant we have been in certain areas (not just commercially). 3) Awarding contracts to companies that you know / have worked with in the past is nothing unusual. It doesn't automatically mean that something dodgy is happening. 4) Bringing the badge and NS redevelopment issues into it - muddies the water for me. I actually think that it was right to pull back from the round badge as I don't believe that it meets it's brief irrespective of how nice you think it is - or don't (but I've discussed my views on that at length in other threads). Similarly the NS redevelopment is disappointing but could very well be the right decision to make at the moment. I'm not saying that either issue has been handled particularly well (in fact far from it) but that doesn't mean that they were the wrong decisions. 5) As I have said I don't know enough people who work at Villa to know how valid the concerns about morale are. But I have worked in organisations undergoing huge change where morale among some staff has been poor and among other has been really good. At the end of the day in one case the changes ended up proving to be **** and almost everyone left / in the other the change was superb and most people ended up feeling much better about everything. 6) The most worrying element for me is the allegations of breaching / ignoring employment law and unfairly dismissing staff. Yet the UK / EU have some of the best employment laws in the world and so if the rules have been breached why are there no quoted examples of ongoing legal disputes? Like I say I'm still very much on the fence here and am waiting to see what happens next. Yes there seems a lot of "smoke" but it is also possible that a lot of "smoke" could be down to people not liking specific decisions (which might / might not be good decisions for the club). I know a few people have said that they have more information than is out in the public domain so far - so just to re-iterate my post here isn't about who is right / who is wrong. I'm just trying to provide something to explain why I'm not yet convinced (either way). I also think that the manner of raising this is very poor - there are all kinds of routes that these issues could have been raised through (legal, journalists, anonymous letters to the board / owners, etc). An anonymous post on Twitter just seems such a low bar. But I do also appreciate that maybe there is a very good reason why the author(s) felt that that was their best option.

I don't see the relevance of that. In fact it could almost work the other way. If people are used to working with crap execs then you get used to working in a particular way. If someone comes in and changes that then it will almost certainly make you (and others) uncomfortable, possibly feeling victimised because you are being asked to work in a different way to before. It is entirely possible that a really good exec who instigates really positive changes will cause a lot of friction and upset people at the start.

I worked in an organisation that got taken over a few years ago - what struck me is that the opinions of my colleagues on the new owners / leadership were massively different. A lot of people who had worked there for a long time had very negative views about everything that the new owners did and in particular our new boss. A lot of the newer staff had almost the exact opposite view and thought that the new owners and the boss were brilliant and that their opportunities had improved dramatically. There were a few people in the middle who didn't have much of an impression either way. It was also interesting how people would take exactly the same company decision and use it to reinforce their position. If you didn't like the decision then it was used to show why you were right to be negative. If you did like the decision then it was used to show why you were right to be positive. So you'd have had a very, very different view on the new company depending on which colleagues were whispering to you and which you were listening more intently too. I don't know enough people (any) who work at Villa in different roles to be able to assess whether there is any similarity here.

The interesting thing I took from this is that he mentions 18 months very definitively. Which way pre-dates Heck.

I've just pulled my ACL. At least I think that's what it is called. It's what I am calling it at the minute anyway!! Nurse. Treatment required.

Exactly this! At the start of the season my "hope" was to finish 7th but to be in / around the European places all season rather than snatch a spot at the death like we did last season. 6th would have been a good step forward - Europa League football giving us another adventure, a better way of raising some much needed revenue in these FFP times, etc. Anything above 6th would have been bordering fantasy. We had a great first half of the season and to be in with a shot of being top of the league at Christmas or New Year was crazy. It was clear that we were over-achieving. I don't think our recent form is as bad as many have claimed - the PL is tough and every match is difficult. Everyone has said from the start that our biggest challenge will be the depth of the squad - FFP prevents us from fixing that quickly. That's not a failure of the club - that is like you say a sign that we've returned quicker than expected and have been running ahead of where we should be for the last 13-14 months. We've hit a ridiculous situation where basically all our permanent players in one position are injured at the same time. Hopefully, Pau is fight enough to return and not jeopardise his recovery. But the last 14 months have been the most fun I have had as a Villa fan for almost 20 years. For a lot of that time 7 points out of 15 would have been good - average form. The fact that it is being described as "awful" is great news. We are 10 points clear of 7th with 14 matches left to go. Newcastle's record in the last 5 is exactly the same as ours. West Ham haven't won in 5 and have dropped 4 points against us in that period. We have also gained 3 points on Brighton. Which takes us down to Chelsea who are 12 points (effectively 13 with goal difference) behind and have City, Spurs and Newcastle in quick succession. It's going to be tough with so many injuries but we were by far the better team against Man Utd and so there's a lot of positives we should be taking from that and the Sheff Utd matches. Forza Villa!

But the internal procedures are all based on UK / EU employment law which is really precise in terms of what companies can and cannot do. The letter alleges that people (in relatively high positions) have been unfairly dismissed or sacked over mental health issues - which are illegal and (usually) quite easy to prove (as you have to demonstrate that every step of the HR procedures has been followed to the absolute letter otherwise the company loses its case immediately). That is the way that those things should taken. The impact of 3 or 4 people winning unfair dismissal cases is significantly more impactful on instigating a widespread investigation into the way the company is being run than posting something on Twitter. I'm not in a position to comment either way on whether the allegations ar true, partially true or just the ramblings of a disaffected person who may or may not happen to work for Villa. On the one hand there is the "no smoke without fire" argument and on the other there's the fact that there is no burden of proof in place for an anonymous post by an anonymous user on social media.

If any company was suddenly hit with a swathe of legal cases covering unfair dismissals, discrimination / bullying in the workplace, etc - then believe me there would soon be all sorts of people swarming the way that other parts of the business are being run.

The big red flag is that many of the alleged incidents referred to in this letter would be clear breaches of employment law that ANY lawyer specialising in this area would be confident of winning (if true). This would clearly be the route that almost all of the allegations should go down (and a lot of legal firms would take on with minimum up front fees). So why instead write an anonymous letter, post it on an anonymous Twitter account and copy in a load of fan groups who have pretty much no power / scope to do anything? It seems a very random approach. Particularly as in many cases the proper approach is so blatantly obvious - take your position to any legal firm and they'd pretty much be able to tell you in 30 minutes flat whether you have a case or not. I would imagine that if there were as many cases as alleged in this letter then there would be a lot of legal firms who would be more than delighted to have the opportunity for a big, straight-forward win.

Having lived in Kent for most of my life (before heading south) I can tell you that the government are very keen on using motorways as car parks and so we could easily copy the "solutions" used on the M20 and deploy them on the M6 on match days. It solves all the problems of too many cars on the streets around the ground.

And they can't "just move". There's all kinds of stories about residents living close to Anfield who had homes valued at £80k who received offers from the club of circa £30k (which they rightly refused) only to see the market value drop to around £35-40k because of all the issues in the area and a sudden lack of people wanting to buy in an area with an unclear future and / or unable to get mortgages because mortgage companies were (rightly) worried that the property values would decline further and so if the owners failed to meet their mortgage payments then the mortgage company wouldn't be able to recover their costs.

That doesn't mean that the local residents will not face similar issues to those faced in Liverpool. Suddenly an extra 20,000 people tramping past their homes, parking outside their front gate, the extra exhaust fumes caused by more cars stuck in traffic jams, reduced access to sunlight (Liverpool have had to convert many properties into businesses because they are not subject to the same planning restrictions), etc. There's a whole heap of issues that need to be properly assessed. Of course the NS redevelopment plans had been approved but I'm not sure whether expanding any other stands wouldn't face significant issues. In which case spending a bucket load of cash that we might end up throwing away before we've even managed to break even on the project would be a pretty flawed approach.