allani

Only when we play in the Champions League (which will hopefully mean exactly the same thing!).

A new kit manufacturer and a new shirt sponsor announced at the same time would do wonders for our FFP projections!!!

Well he does then say that Celtic's kit / merch revenues were £29m (although it's not clear whether they rose by that amount or rose to that amount) so potentially £100m every four years.

I think it is absolutely coming from the club. We can't release the info officially but there's nothing that directly ties us to media "speculation" or discussion (there's no way this can be speculation now). A couple of things that I noted from the article - (1) "Celtic raised £29m in kit and merchandising revenue alone, which represented nearly a quarter of the Scottish giant's overall turnover, while Leeds recorded a similar figure in 2022" and (2) "The franchise’s (96ers) valuation was under $300m when Heck first arrived, now, it stands at over $3bn." I have said for a while that though FFP might be a challenge short term - we've clearly fallen so far behind other teams in a number of areas that there's real potential that FFP could play into our hands really well in the next few years because there's so many more opportunities for us to grow our revenue numbers faster and higher (in percentage terms) than a lot of other clubs. We might not match them with the overall numbers but the difference between our "now" figure and our "then" figure could be huge which would give us some real power in the transfer market.

Good point. Also if my big dream of a new shirt sponsor also comes true - then again that might have the same restrictions (i.e. that we can't officially announce it before the old deal expires). So maybe the less news we get on all of these fronts the better - because it makes a really big announcement more likely???!! Let me dream!

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the badge, kit and Adidas are all confirmed at the same time. I think it might be frustrating for us as fans in the meantime - but also a single announcement of all three is likely to create a bigger wave of interest than three separate announcements. I also have a sneaky feeling (maybe more of a hope than anything else) that we might also announce a new shirt sponsor at the same time. We've already shown that we're prepared to pay off contracts to get out of them early so it's not unfeasible that we bin the current **** early. A big new sponsorship deal announcement in with the rest would become a pretty big story and potentially pack a real punch. Especially if it is a big, American based sponsor - you can see exactly how much of a media boon that would be (especially with our new connections with Comcast). Maybe I will be really disappointed when the announcements are really low-key. But I can't help thinking that there's something much bigger happening behind the scenes than we're privy too.

I agree. But Philogene was told that he had a place in our squad this season but decided he wanted more first team football. So I'm just wondering what will have changed over the course of this season? I think he's improved as a player (although only going by second hand accounts on that) - but has he improved enough to start for us? If not then is he / are we more confident that he'll make more appearances off the bench or that he is better equipped to play in the case of injuries / suspensions. I just can't see him playing as many minutes for us as he is at the moment - so at what point does fewer minutes at a higher level become better (for him) than more minutes at a decent level? It might not be quite as simple as we might think (although presumably the fact that he's approved the buy-back clause means that he wouldn't be averse to the possibility of coming back).

I'm not sure that outside of Emi, Pau, Luiz and Ollie we have any players that we could sell for £100m. But seriously, I think you are right with the general point that every player has his value (even those four) and if another club are willing to exceed that then we'd be stupid not to at least consider it. I am confident that Monchi and his team would (a) already know about and (b) be able to talk to, a large number of potential replacements. So whilst I do think it would take a genuinely ridiculous bid to tempt us into selling any of our key players - I'm also confident that we've already got a list of potential replacements for everyone in the squad so that we can try and either minimise the impact of losing a key player or even capitalise on it and strengthen the team further. So I'm more confident that we won't lose a star player but also more confident that if we did we wouldn't be in a worse place (or at least wouldn't be for very long).

Isn't the challenge still going to be that he wants to be playing every week? Emery wanted him in the squad this season (and gave him minutes in the pre-season matches) but he chose to move away. Has he done enough to prove that he's going to be in our starting XI next season? Would he be happy to be on the bench? I suspect he's probably gone from being a squad player to being in the match day squad - but is that enough for him? He's still got some seriously good players to jump ahead of to get a significant amount of playing time each week (Ramsey and Buendia). Our home grown position hasn't changed significantly from this season to next (as far as I can think) so why would it suddenly be so much more urgent?

That's definitely my take too. I am sure that we will have no need to sell any player that Emery regards as "key" this summer. It is always possible of course that we receive an offer that becomes very difficult / impossible to turn down (and CL qualification would make it less likely that a player would push for a move to a CL team). But if that does happen then I think we're in the best position for years to find an effective replacement (who might develop into an improvement) quickly and without breaking the bank. The Home Grown consideration is an extra one that I think might get overlooked during the general speculation / rumour phase.

If the club are gambling on us finishing Top 4 otherwise we're ****ed from an FFP perspective then ultimately we are going to get ****ed sooner or later. It's just not sensible to assume that we are going to finish in the Top 4 or 5 for the next few years. As Emery says there are up to 6 or 7 teams better than us on paper. Obviously football isn't played on paper and spending ****loads isn't a guarantee of building a good team either. The top of the PL is hopefully going to get much more competitive over the next few seasons - there's already 8 or 9 teams who could realistically claim to be aiming for Europa League qualification or better next season. Which means that some are going to miss out. Any club that is "all in" on qualifying for Europe as the only way of meeting their FFP is going to come unstuck very, very quickly. 6th would be a terrific season for us. If the owners have put us in a position that it becomes a major failure then very serious questions need to be asked indeed about the way the club is being run. Obviously qualifying for the CL would be a great boost financially - but it has to be a boost IF we qualify rather than a massive burden if we don't.

It's an interesting exchange that you could read in very different ways. I mean I think we all expect that we will try and sell some players this summer - preferably those whose costs don't meet the value they add to the squad. It's very easy to read what Emery says as suggesting that we might have to sell a squad player that we might not necessarily want to in an ideal world. It's also very easy to read it as we might have to sell a more important player. My general feeling is that he's talking about less important players (i.e. where we already have cover or where the player's a regular part of the match day squad but not a key player) rather than hinting that we might need to sell a Watkins / Luiz type player. I'd put Ramsey closer to the latter of those two categories as he seems to be getting plenty of minutes now he's back from injury.

I think this is more about stopping things that happened with Cardiff and Hull. So it shouldn't be possible to change the club's logo from a Bluebird to a Dragon, their main colours from blue to red or the name of the club - without the fans having some level of involvement. I don't think a minor tweak to a club badge needs a fan consultation - in the same way that fans don't need to be consulted on new kit designs. It then becomes a question as to what a "minor tweak" covers. It's almost certain that going from the Lerner badge to the anticipated Heck badge would be considered a tweak and probably wouldn't officially need to go through any fan consultation. But the Lerner - Purslow badge involves a change in the overall shape, the colour and direction of the lion and of the principal colours (although using the club's traditional colour palette) and so is less of a "tweak" but probably still not a fundamental change. (Which is probably why the 1 year kit badge narrative was later adopted to make it easier to switch back to something more similar to the "original".) It seems to be a rule introduced to handle a very specific incident around particularly bad owners (who should never have passed the ownership test anyway). It also didn't seem to stop Newcastle playing half their matches in Saudi Arabia's national kit this season (or Man City playing in colours closer to the Etihad cabin crew uniform than their traditional away kit).

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).