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allani

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Everything posted by allani

  1. allani
    Yeah he was terrible at the weekend only creating three goals. The trouble isn't Luiz - it's Tielemans and McGinn having awful matches and giving the ball away every time they got it. It meant that Chelsea could put two men onto Luiz as he was our only midfield threat.
  2. allani
    My only possible solace from tonight is that so far this season every time we have lost we've gone on to win our next match. 3 points against Man Utd will put is in a great position in the league. I just hope the players remember how to pass and control a football as quickly as they seemed to forget tonight.
  3. allani
    Kind of shows how bad the starting XI were. At least he scuffed it in. The rest of them kept scuffing it straight to Chelsea players.
  4. allani
    The attackers have to hold their hands up too. Ollie's hardly made any runs in that first half - every time we have the ball he's stood next to the CB. Bailey's dropped back to try and get involved rather than pestering their back line. When the service is struggling you need to do more to try and create a chance - they (and Tielemans) have vanished. The whole team are playing too passively and are too static. Maybe they are focussed on the weekend's match?
  5. allani
    It's the same line-up at the team that played great at the weekend. The problem is that we are playing our 4th and 5th choice centre backs - who look like fourth and fifth choice centre backs. McGinn and Tielemans have disappeared and so the only midfielder Chelsea have to worry about is Luiz - so they are crowding him out of the game. Ollie has barely broken into a sweat and is waiting for the ball rather than trying to make the runs he did at the weekend. We're static all over the park - I don't see how you can pin that on Emery. He's not told the players to stand still like statues (at both ends of the pitch).
  6. allani
    You have massively oversimplified the viewpoints there. A lot of people have said that pausing the redevelopment makes sense (to them) at the moment because of the challenges with the FFP rules tightening over the next 2 seasons and that there are other ways that we can raise revenues in the meantime that don't require such a large investment. That isn't the same as your Option 1. Qualifying for the Europa League of the CL especially with the revised format coming in - earns far more additional revenue that adding extra seats. Given the FFP restrictions - I'd rather we maximise the money we can invest in the playing team in the short term rather than tie all the money up in a redevelopment project that either means we can't spend as much on new players as we would like and / or that we have to sell key players in order to fund it. That makes little sense (to me) in the short term. Ultimately, I do think we need to do a thorough assessment of whether VP can be expanded, how much of it needs to be (as a minimum) renovated and review all the options available. But given the FFP issues over the next 2 seasons or so - I'd prioritise the on field investment for now (6 - 8 European matches a season dramatically increases our annual match day income).
  7. allani
    Couple this with the comments Heck made about the player's tunnel and wanting to make better use of it - I'm also certain that there is revenue to be made by doing that in terms of both fans paying to be in the tunnel pre / post games AND through additional sponsorship. I mean at the moment you might pay for a couple of strategically placed logos but if there's more made about that specific part of the stadium then why not sell naming rights over it. I doubt it is something that we've exploited that well - whereas it sounds like the kind of thing that Comcast / Atairos / Heck are much more acquainted with.
  8. allani
    Just reading a bit more on this - the stadium is owned by Comcast who sold the naming rights to Wells Fargo. But a couple of interesting additions - some stadium features were funded by other companies - so for example the scoreboard was purchased by and branded as Comcast, I think all the HDTVs, etc (on concourses and in executive boxes) were also all paid for / sponsored by one of Comcast's partners. Also they changed their ticket provider from Ticketmaster to New Era Tickets - who are owned by..... Comcast. There seems to be just a few too many connections there for this to be coincidence...
  9. allani
    I think the Philadelphia stadium is "owned" by Comcast - who have pretty tight connections with Atairos.....
  10. allani
    Not at all. One of Ollie's faults in the past has been that in those positions he has either shot low or tried to beat the keeper. His lack of a "dink" finish has been discussed here many times. This allows keepers to set themselves so that they can stay low and then cover either the low shot or the attempted "go around". The fact that Ollie went for the dink (and tried it badly later on) will start to mean that keepers (and goalkeeping coaches) can't rule that out in the future - so it is one more "option" that they need to cover. The dink was almost perfect - the only possible criticism was that his instinct was to head to the corner flag to celebrate rather than follow his shot in (but his natural momentum was kind of taking him that way anyway). But as McGinn covered that off anyway it's a minor point. As a striker you need to have the keeper trying to cover as many options as possible as it is less likely that he can cover all of them and be trying to cover as many as possible there's more chance he's not perfectly set. The reverse is also true at the other end with Emi - he's so good at blocking with either foot, or his body and staying "tall" at the same time that he's always taking options away from the striker - there's no easy way of beating him and so he's immediately putting more pressure on the striker to find a "perfect" finish - which makes it more likely that they'll miss.
  11. allani
    Next weekend is massive. A real 6 pointer for us against Man Utd. Win and we would be 11 points ahead of them with 14 matches to go. Whilst Utd are one of those teams that could string 6 or 7 wins together they are also the type of team that can just as easily string 2 or 3 defeats together. I can't see them scoring more than 25 - 30 points in those 14 games so that would leave us needing 20 to be pretty confident. So from that perspective a draw wouldn't be a bad result - leaving us an 8 point gap. So 25 points (2 points per game to be relatively comfortable) from the last 14. Lose and we've got a battle to regain momentum. On the same day West Ham play Arsenal. If we win and West Ham lose - we'll have at least an 11 point lead over the team in 7th. If Brighton don't beat Spurs on Saturday then that lead could be 13 points. I mean maybe draws in both of those other games would be ideal - but I think the dream combination would probably be wins for Spurs, Arsenal and us. That would establish a pretty big gap between the Top 5 in the table and the battle for 6th-9th. Whilst wins for West Ham and Brighton might help us in the battle for 4th - I think I'd prefer to get a step closer to fifth. Worst case would probably be wins for Utd, West Ham and Brighton as that makes the gap below us look a bit more insecure. 6th / 7th was my target at the start of the season. Hopefully by the end of next weekend we'll have a big gap to those places and can then focus on the battle for 5th and above. If we can claim a good FA Cup win in midweek (no injuries and not having to expend too much energy) then all the better. I just hope that we don't have an end-to-end belter of a cup tie that goes to extra time and penalties. A nice comfortable 2-0 home win would be perfect. Well actually two nice 2-0 home wins next week would be absolutely superb.
  12. allani

    Douglas Luiz

    allani replied to LondonLax's topic in Villa Talk

    Ok - Dougie's assist for Ollie's goal was absolutely superb. But the ball through for Ollie that ended up with McGinn scoring was sensational too. I guess it no longer counts as an assist - which is a shame because they would easily double up as the best double assist of all time. But the actual assist - wow, just wow. I mean spotting the run was one thing but getting the ball to bend around the defender, allowing Ollie to run straight onto it and not have to worry about controlling the ball AND giving the keeper absolutely no chance to try and rush out and sweep up the danger.... Orgasmic.
  13. allani
    Is hoping we end the evening in third place too ambitious?
  14. allani
    No-one that Emery sees as being important in the next 3-5 years (unless we / they get an insanely big offer from a team that expects to get to the CL final). We've got the advantage of having lots of areas where our current levels of revenue are poor (main shirt sponsors, etc) where we can only improve our revenues. We're in a good position to secure a number of extra home games each season and increased prize funds through Europe - that again would be additional revenues compared to previous seasons. We probably haven't baked those into our budgets either (unlike the Sky 6 teams who will almost certainly have based their budgets on long runs in either the CL or Europa Leagues). All of these suggest that our revenues as a percentage of what they currently are should be increasing for next year - which will not be the case for a lot of other teams around us. I think this means that we'll be less under FFP pressure than others. I also think Emery / Monchi have history in terms of finding value in the transfer market - so I don't think we'll be looking to sell £30m players so we can sign someone for £80m. We've got a relatively young squad (at least in terms of the core of the team) and so we don't need to replace lots of players) and we've got the likes of Ramsey, Buendia, hopefully Mings coming back having missed most / all of the season or in Jacob's case having a very stop / start season to date. So we can probably do excellent business without a huge transfer kitty - again reducing the pressure to sell one player to strengthen two or three positions. Of course I expect a lot of our players to be of interest to several clubs - but I don't think we will feel compelled to sell. I am in an extremely positive and optimistic mood.
  15. allani
    I'm not wild about the shape of the shield (but it is different to any other PL shield so it ticks the unique button) but that monochrome look is really smart. If only there was a way of getting more claret into the main version or adjusting the tone of blue to contrast better with the yellow. I feel like maybe the people working on it have been slightly too conservative and just needed a bit more bravery around fixing the colour issue. I assume that they didn't want to make the background claret (heading into West Ham territory) - at a larger scale / on its own the yellow lion looks great but a claret lion contrasts better at smaller sizes. If the blue was slightly bolder it might make all the difference - BUT I guess you need to be very careful that it doesn't become Scum blue.
  16. allani
    I'd definitely agree with that. At full size the detailed yellow lion is nice - but at the smaller size it still does what the Lerner badge did and washes out. A claret lion at that point would hold its definition better.
  17. allani
    I suspect it is for a pretty specific scenario where the full colour version would be a bit jarring. I think I'd want to see it in situ before casting judgement. For example, I wasn't convinced at all by the grey monochrome version of the 2023 badge and (my oft-cited reservations aside ) it actually looks very good on the training gear.
  18. allani
    Just when I thought we might be friends again...
  19. allani
    Understood. But I do think that part of the issue with the badge pre-dates Heck (but I've explained that above so no point going over it again). Also I think there are quicker ways to bring in more revenue to spend on the team than an expensive redevelopment that was also going to reduce our revenue over the next 2 seasons because it would reduce our capacity in the short term. Given everything that is happening with FFP in that same period that looks like quite a big risk and something that would mean we'd have less cash to spend on the team. So I kind of see this in the exact opposite way to you - it's a sign (to me) that the club want to invest as much as possible in the squad over the next couple of years and to me that shouts ambition to establish ourselves in the top group as quickly as possible. Get things on the pitch sorted first and then look at the surrounding infrastructure. I hope that's what it signals anyway! But I do get / appreciate where you are coming from and I had expected a more "professional" / engaged approach to complex issues (blimey that's almost me agreeing with you twice in one day !!). We could have avoided a lot of the noise around the badge and the redevelopment had the comms / engagement been better handled and the decisions better explained.
  20. allani
    The conversation was about why Man City let Rogers go at 20....
  21. allani
    I disagree. I had a lot of leeway to do my job because I was a trusted expert - but I still had to present a business case for major initiatives that I wanted to adopt and I needed to get them signed off (sometimes that was a pretty quick and easy process and others it needed a full presentation to the Exec). There will be a whole load of things that don't require sign-off but I'd be shocked if Heck could scrap a stand redevelopment or announce a new stadium development without Board approval. Just as Emery and Monchi are given plenty of leeway for the footballing side of things - but there's no way that Monchi would be able to sign a player for £100m on £250k a week without having that ratified and signed off by someone. There's a whole heap of cases where companies / executives have been taken to court for not applying sufficient corporate oversight to poor / illegal business practices conducted under their watch. At the very least they will be keen to ensure that there is a process in place that they can point to that shows that all the appropriate boxes have been ticked. After all if Heck screws up our revenues or Monchi overspends his budget then it will be the owners / Board that will feel the wrath of the authorities for any regulation breaches.
  22. allani
    I don't have a problem with them backing their man. I do have a problem if the only business case that was presented was "I don't like the badge" and "I don't think we should redevelop the stand because that was proposed by someone else". I absolutely do think that Heck vetoed the badge because he made it clear to the Board and the owners that the "new" one didn't serve the needs of the business / brand and presented a compelling case at to why it didn't. That's very different to suggesting that he just threw it out because it upset his ego. Same with the redevelopment - he clearly felt that the business case was no long valid and persuaded the Board that there were better options at present for improving revenue. In both cases he has done what any responsible CEO should do and prevent major spend on projects that he thinks no longer have a good business case. That's a very different situation to the suggestions that he's pulled the plug on both because of his ego or because they weren't his ideas. Obviously either could be the real reason - but I'd be deeply concerned if the owners allowed any major decision (with both the badge and the redevelopment were) to be made without the approval of the Board and without a strong business case to support it.
  23. allani
    In that case we should be looking at NSWE in a very different light. They are the owners. They should have had the balls to tell Heck that they didn't agree and vetoed his decision. Now either they don't care (which would seem unlikely given everything else they are doing) or they are so rich that they are happy to throw money around to "fix" something multiple times. I would be incredibly disappointed in them if Heck just walked in and said I don't like the badge I'm going to do a new one and they didn't seriously grill him on why they should do that having just spent a lot of money doing it once. They sign the bills and if they are happy writing cheques out because someone just says "I don't like this" then the club is in very bad hands.
  24. allani
    The claret lion on the blue background is one of the design elements I do like about the new round badge (it's better than the pale yellow on pale blue for sure on the Lerner badge for sure). So we've finally found something that we can both agree on!!! Based on that I'll limit my response to the other points to the fact that Chelsea and Villa both use monochrome versions of the badge (which looks really cool on some of our training / leisure gear) and so colour shouldn't be the major differentiator as the badge needs to work with no colour.
  25. allani
    You can make a shield any shape you like so that it becomes unique to your club (it doesn't even need to be a shield). I think that the more elements of the badge that you have that are unique (or at least identifiable) the more scope you have to use each of them independently - which in turn widens the palette of brand components that you can use. It's much harder to draw a round badge that isn't... well just a circle. And then when you use the round design on it's own it has no identity - it's just a circle.
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