Adam2003

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.

This has to be the funniest post ever. Our history makes the history of Man City look absolutely garbage. Yes, you have a history but it isn't all that impressive. Wasn't the last trophy you won back in the 70's (other than the First Division in 2000 or whatever it was). Man City have a good history and I respect it. However, that history ended for me the moment you became, basically, a real-life version of someone cheating on Football Manager. That's not what City were all about.

At the end of the day let's not forget Randy's fortune comes from credit cards :winkold:

The Spurs deal was £34m over four years, which is quite a decent amount. It'd probably pay for two £10m players and their wages for 2-3 years. Yep, chances are we'll be between Everton's £3 million per year and Tottenham's £8 million.

Don't panic and rest assured the club will only sell him if Randy and Martin decide it's the best option and fair price?

I'd be surprised if it's that much. Everton are on a similar level to us, and their deal with Chang is £8 million over three years, so less than £3 million per year, albeit signed in 2008. We won't be too much more than that, will we?

No news is good news. The media banging on about it will only make him more likely to leave. They were going on and on about it to fill column inches and now they have something else - it's a good thing.

Don't think it hurts us at all in this situation that we have pretty much as many players in the England squad as those who might be tapping him up. I hope he only talks to Warnock and Heskey.

Well, of course not, no-one wants to lose one of our best players. But that's football, isn't it? Whoever you are. Manchester United lost Ronaldo last summer, Arsenal might lose Fabregas to Barca this summer. The question is what you do afterwards. Spurs lost Carrick and Berbatov to United but have still built and got fourth. Hope he stays though. But if not, good luck to him, as I'm sure he'll leave in "the right way", and the club will go on.

Peopl saying stufflike "I can't believe we have to resort to basically begging companies through e-mail to think about sponsoring us"... That's how sponsorship and marketing works. I can tell you for a fact that Tottenham's sponsorship department are working like crazy at the moment trying to find someone to replace Mansion, and a lot of the work involved is calling big companies up and offering them the opportunity. The fact people get riled is just bizarre when you understand that's how the sponsorship world works. Like the papers going mental about John Terry's agents sending out a thing offering him for sponsorship... don't people realise that's what everyone does? Do you think Nike always phone Cristiano Ronaldo's agent rather than the other way aorund? In that case, what does Ronaldo pay him so much for? If we didn't want people to do this, we wouldn't have a sponsorship department. Even if someone offers us £5 million a season today we'll have people contacting companies tomorrow to see if they can get £6m.