Adam2003

Bingo. Unlikely to be in the top four, could be anywhere from fifth to eighth even if we have a good season, would be shocked at ninth.

It was announced on the 10th June. I like the kit and am fine with the sponsor.

No club can keep its best players all the time. Could Man United keep Ronaldo? My viewpoint on this remains the same: if Milner goes, we get very, very good money. If he stays, we keep a good player. I'll be happy either way. But Manure got some mileage out of Ronaldo. We've had Milner 2 seasons. I don't see what differnece that makes tbh. But even if so, Spurs had Berbatov (supposedly their best player) for two seasons. Sold him and improved, after previously selling Carrick, also supposedly their best player. Manchester United struggled after selling Ronaldo, but back when everyone thought Ruu van Nistelrooy was brilliant they sold him and improved loads. We sold Barry and improved. I'm not saying we'll improve if we sell Milner, of course not. Just you never know what will happen and there's no point giving up because however good we get, even if we'd been champions three times running like United last summer, there will always be clubs rich enough to tempt our players away and/or offer us a price that tempts us into selling.

No club can keep its best players all the time. Could Man United keep Ronaldo? My viewpoint on this remains the same: if Milner goes, we get very, very good money. If he stays, we keep a good player. I'll be happy either way.

This seems to have been brushed over, despite the fact it's a mad claim. Have you been looking at the referees by mistake?

I've been told this as well by people who should know. Not at the Villa end, but apparently it's £20 million although some of that is dependent on league performance etc.

To be fair, anyone I know in the business or any business that works with it does. I agree with you I'd rather not have the tagline though.

People saying Milner's not there - surely that's as simple as him being off on holiday at the moment. He did the viral thing for season tickets after the speculation had started after all.

£80k p/w !! The best thing is Gold bragged about it. "I can promise you this is a multi, multi-million dollar deal" etc etc. Well done, David.

I agree but it isn't nowt. West ham are forking out more than £4 million a year in wages on him - I'm not sure he'd be worth being our highest-paid player even on a free. Joe Cole, mind...

I do agree with you, but I suppose it's a major revenue stream. We have cheap tickets, we don't get that many fans, but we have people demanding big-money signings. They can't really win.

Marketing people aren't stupid. They're paid to know what fans will like.

Yes there has been, as others have mentioned before ntl sponsored both us and newcastle at the same time. And why would either team play without the logo?! Us and Newcastle with NTL. Wigan and Bolton now with 188Bet. Celtic and Rangers. And why on earth would one play without the sponsor when we play Fulham? That match is the sponsor's biggie. And don't anyone claim it's smalltime - Real Madrid and AC Milan in the Champions League, both with Bwin, was what launched Bwin to the next level.

I really don't think a Foreign Exchange Broker has spent millions of pounds to "show off" by sponsoring Aston Villa. Yes it'll do to their brand what it did to 32Red, get it "out there". It doesn't matter if their target customer isn't the bog standard football fan, it'll still raise the awareness of the brand. Their target audience is the Asian markets they want to start using their services. In fact most PL deals these days are either a company looking to break into the UK market or someone looking to raise their profile in Hong Kong, Singapore etc (like Standard Chartered with Liverpool).

this is very odd. ive been in the football section a host of times and hav neevr seena villa shirt. i may go down there this weekend and check it out! Honestly, I see it in there all the time (although I imagine they have the WC shirts up at the moment instead and will be waiting for our new one to come out). Up on the top floor, in the club shirts section, it has all the panelling around the edges and we appear there, and also usually on the mannequins they normally have in the middle. I've even posted on here before about how great it is to see us up there with the likes of Barca and Juve. I'll be shocked if we aren't back there from the day after our kit launch.

What? Last two years we've been consistently front and centre in the Nike superstore on Oxford Circus on the upper floor. The row generally goes Juventus, Manchester United, Aston Villa, Barcelona - we punch well above our weight. Very confused that people are saying otherwise, I often go in just to look at it! Otherwise walk down the street to Soccer Scene on Carnaby Street, which always has our shirts.

you cant say that for sure. if they have the best players, the most money, are packing out their stadium, are making new supporters all the time, and are winning things, then theyll be the biggest club history means **** all when it comes to the present :? City will never ever be a bigger club than an AC Milan, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Liverpool, Man United etc. Get real. There was a time when people would have said Liverpool or United would never be as big as Villa. You never know what will happen in the future.

Spurs are getting just under £10 million per season for their Premier League sponsorship, apparently. Cup games (including Europe) separate.

If he wants to go I'm sure he'll hand in a transfer request and that will be fine by me. If he thinks it's a good move from his point of view then fair enough. We shouldn't expect players to tie themselves to clubs like we do and a transfer request in a private meeting with MON is the way to do it if he does want to move. I just don't want to see him complaining in the papers a la Gareth Barry.

No offence, but this disgusts me and is in ky opinion everything that's wrong with football. I do mean no offence though as you're entitled to your opinion- indeed probably more people share it than share my archaic view that a football club is about more than winning/buying trophies.

Meireles and Defour are out of our league no their not. They are the type of players we need to sign to get into Champions League. We need to sign tehe best players from weaker leagues as they are the hungriest and they want to play in the top league Defour looks nailed on to go to Man Utd, why would Meireles leave Porto who are in CL every season to come to us? Not saying we'll sign him but on the same basis why would Petrov leave Celtic or Bouma leave PSV? (a) Premier League is a higher standard than their domestic league and ( money.

It's completely different PieFacE. We're steadily investing in the club. Randy Lerner has ambitions for the club to be able to run itself financially. He has put money into the club, which he decided to do to get us to a standard to compete with the top half of the table. Man City have invested something like £300m in 2 years. They have bought how many strikers? 5? 6?.. How many midfielders do they currently have? I can see this point. People saying "we do the same thing but on a different scale" miss the point IMO. Of course we do. So does everyone. And it's a fairly similar scale so the league is fairly competitive. However, if one or two clubs can just spend £500 million then it quickly becomes a joke league. If Spurs spend £60 million, we spend £40 million and Everton spend £20 million that can still be competitive. If Man City just spend £500 million, it won't be. So what's the point in watching it? I would not want someone to come in and just buy us the league year after year. Of course I would like someone (like Randy Lerner) who has enough money for us to compete in a decent league. That's not hypocritical. (If 20 multi-multi-billionaires came in of course, ie every PL club had one, then that would probably make for a decent league!)

I wonder how the Silva deal (and Toure to a lesser extent) will affect a possible move for Milner? They can only play 11 at a time...

It doesn't. No more than the US$12 million FxPro pays to Virgin Racing affects ours (other than that FxPro doesn't have unlimited money, of course).

Villa's deal with FxPro is worth more than Fulham's. Significantly more. I know about that more from the Fulham side than the Villa one, I'm not any sort of Villa ITK! But trust me on this. And both are good deals for the respective clubs.