VILLAMARV

All blame aside, we are where we are.

having been benched all season the "BIG STARS" are obviously being paid to do not alot on the pitch. have Dunne, Bent, Ireland and Nzogbia all been injured this year, yes. have they performed when they've been on the pitch? (with the exception of Nzogbia trying a bit harder but still being a bit greedy on the ball) HELL NO. 

In fairness to Bent on tuesday he tried a bit and had a few lay offs that sped our play up a bit, unfortunately I dont remember any of them going to a villa player and the moves broke down on the rare occasion he was fed a pass. Benteke's first touch was heavy (and thats being kind) and also lost possession. hence the ONLY chance we created was Nzogbia getting it keeping it and hitting a shot that was unlucky not to go in.

I'm not a coach or a manger or any of that but I was watching and I've been watching most of the season. theres a reason Benteke, Gabby and Weimann are getting a game ahead of Bent.

It doesnt really matter how we got here with these individuals now. What matters is are they going to give 100% effort if they get on the pitch. If the answer is no with any of them then it doesnt matter how good their feet are if their hearts and minds arent in it.

Hopefully we'll make a last ditch attempt at prise Charles N'Zogbia away from Charles N'Zogbia FC.

nice

Warnocks gone!

YEEEEEEEHAAAAWWW!!

This, very this!!!! At least bennett and stevens want to be in the shirt. Whatever happened, whether he should have played or not he's one of the most expensive mistakes in recent years.

2 Villa related things to smile about in the same day! obviously not matchday then! but I'll take anything at the mo 

I really wont miss you stephen

found any stats on Sylla yet con? I saw someone beat you to the heat maps

anyone know where this morning's chat about Warnock having a midday deadline to sign for leeds came from? 

still paying him £40k a week (allegedly) until it's confirmed he's gone. If whatever % we saved on Hutton's wages by sending him on loan is being spent paying Sylla's wages I can't see us bringing anyone in however unspectacular it may be.

Still dreaming there's a club out there that wants Bent &/or Ireland - but in all seriousness it's far too late to go finding replacements or reinforcements even if they go now. 

Never say never though........ I did and we signed Sylla !!

If we weren't going to spend money then why the **** did we hire Henke in the summer? What was the thinking behind that?

to be fair we don't know what list of players he left behind.

No business? or no incoming players........please tell me Warnock's gone........

I'm not one to over-react, and like to think I take most things on the chin, but today's BBC transfer feed has been absolutely riddled with sarcastic and negative comments regarding Aston Villa. 

 

Whoever's writing it is starting to piss me off.

 

Edit: Chris Bevan's name has gone onto the cuntbucket list.

yeah he got to me about 5 pages ago! 

EDIT: well 1.14pm to be precise!

my club been down with have I. Third division been in have we.

Much feeling I sense in you. Powerful the dark side is. Don't give in to the dark side.

Much truth you speak, But angers the Jedi when forgotten history is. 

He does it with everyone when he does the live match text.

 

I think he's quite funny, tbh.

 

EDIT: @Marv and his question about Chris Bevan

lol ok, I'll chill

But I will remember to try and kick him if he's ever down

Sylla's passed his medical, just formalities to sign apparently.

on another note who the hell is Chris Bevan (the guy writing the BBC deadline day feed)?

anyone else getting wound up by the sneering sarcasm every time he mentions us?

From the bbc website:

i dont really want to get involved but i do remember watching MANY games where we lumped it up to collymores head and played it in to dublins feet and got nowhere fast.

Your point is sound, just memories are sometimes clouded

Because a few on here wanted Curtis Davies at villa?

and I thought I was going mad!

FFS

he should go down molineux and then end up at the saddlers......

Luciano Becchio - Leeds to Norwich - Steve Morison - Norwich to Leeds - 

hopefully the cash Leeds just got from Norwich will mean they confirm taking warnock off us. 

His photo has been gone from the villa OS for a couple of days but still no confirmation?

Is Darren Bent capable of causing such a buzz?

who knows? but if i cant get excited about nothing on transfer deadline day when can i?

Just a bit of perspective on this mad day - just caught this on the BBC website and it reminded me it could be worse! 

"If Celtic's Gary Hooper moves to the Premier League today, the sell-on clause might just keep my club Scunthorpe in business."

anyway then I saw this and thought I'd fan the flames on the idea that we might see the back of bent today. Apparently the stoke dressing room is all excited  

 Stoke striker Michael Owen on Twitter: "Never known there to be such a buzz around deadline day. Everyone talking about it in the dressing room."

Personally I'm writing off Everton, Arsenal and Man U away - and Man City, Liverpool and Chelsea at home.

so in my head we have 8 games left 4 at home (W.Ham, QPR, Fulham and Sunderland) and 4 away (Reading, Stoke, Norwich and Wigan)

The worst thing for me is Wigan are so our bogey team and we have them away last day. But if we cant beat W.Ham, Reading and QPR in the next 6 games we're gone.

Fact is, I doubt anyone on here has seen him play, so it's pretty impossible to make informed opinions either way on this signing. All I'll say is he plays in a position we need to strengthen so let's hope he's a success in strengthening it!

Switters speaks the truth IMO - and lets face it he's already our best defensive midfielder even though we haven't seen him yet

lol, no point getting excited, if its true, he wont make the ounce of difference at all, he wont save us from relegation, just another arrogant french @@@@ looking for the money, plus the fact hes young hes got as much experience as the smack rats in our youth set up, give it a couple of months he will go back to france on loan, somewhere like lyon

 

EDIT: cant see why you are all saying hes the DM we need, yes we need a DM, but we need one with experience, who can pick out a pass, lead the attack and turn a game around, that sort of thing costs money

 

next...

I only logged in coz i heard on the radio we were actually gonna sign someone and a DMC too I was so happy, my missus said it was great to see me smile for the first time since xmas, maybe its not so bad after all, maybe lerner and lambert have a plan after all, maybe - just maybe we wont end up in the championship - didnt last long though eh!!

Cheer up mate, we're gonna turn them wheels, fight like hell, not lie down (always an advantage in football methinks), give it a right good go and then we'll be fine. 

YAY

Happy to admit I was wrong in thinking we wouldnt sign anyone in the window. they've gone and made me look a bit sylla now

That is despite the newly-published Deloitte Football Money League 2013 placing Villa among the world’s top 30 clubs in reported revenue terms in the 2011/12 season.

Quote above from the Birmingham Mail article,

Very surprised at this, how is our revenue so high when our attendances have been on the decline for years? Are we really making that much from merchandise, sponsorship etc.

only thing i can find on us so far was in the daily mail 24th jan - 

In 2009/10 we were in the top 20 so as with our position in the Premier League we have gone backwards.

yes. but as snowychap and others have pointed out its based on turnover. suggests we have the 9th highest turnover in the premier league last year

Nonsense.

The original point was that you appeared to know little about what you were going on about (transfer balance sheet and so on) and the follow up posts would seem to confirm that.

Ok, everyone's always entitled to their opinion obviously. Sorry if the fact that I copied and pasted a term you're not familiar with upset you in some way. Ive not suggested I have the accounts - but we can piece together a good picture from the freely available information at our disposal. Operating cashflow figures for 2010/11 was +£4m. yes deals for players may involve staggered payments. but also our signings may also have been paid in this fashion. All I suggested in the first place was since those last accounts where we made a £53m loss, between McCleish and Lambert they've spent on transfer fees alone the same amount as we've received since A Young and Downing left. 

add to that the £12 - 14m drop in income in one year i mentioned above, the money being paid in interest repayments to the loan from Randy, the payments to McCleish, Grant and Norwich, agents fees, wages and all the day to day costs incurred running the club. do you think it was nonsense to think that the players wages we lost in that time aren't going to cover these losses? I said the cupboards are bare. Is that the bit you call nonsense?

I'm interested though, because if you're going to point out I'm wrong and that we're in great financial shape, with a huge transfer kitty at our disposal and no need for help from Lerner RIGHT NOW believe me I'm all ears coz we're all looking for something good to cling onto at the moment. 

from the telegraph 10 May 2012, 2010/11 figures. came with this little write up:

• Solvency index for 2010-11 is compiled using operating cashflow minus interest paid/plus received

Cant find much of this years figures yet (released 2013 for 2011/12) apart from this line from the mail - 

Which shows bugger all really (not even the cash flow, I'd guess, as it would appear that very few transfers are paid in full on transfer of registration).

So in the same way that our wage structure wasn't sustainable under O'Neill, Lerner's continued cost cutting exercise won't be sustainable in the Premiership or Championship and eventually he will have to spend to stop his investment from drowning.

Absolutely. Nail on the head. When though?? we all know the TEAM desperately needs it. Makes me wonder if McCleish went and messed up their plans last year by staying up tbh. Without basically Bent, Ireland and Given off the books with no replacements I dont see how we're going to be solvent in the premiership. Going down (and getting what? 40m a year less due to parachute payments) and an everything must go sale will reign. 

The only time? Apart from the previous year you mean, when we sold Milner and Young?

 

And the season before that the net spend was £3m.

The whatty what?

Just saying the +/- figure for transfer fees for the listed transfers shows we took £20m more than we spent. - which in turn was spent by Lambert pre season.

Also when it comes to the 'Downing money' or the 'Milner money', shouldn't the amount we paid for them be factored too. I'm just thinking when people moan about Lerner not putting in any dosh. I think sometimes it gets forgotten.

depends on the context of the conversation really. If we add up all the in and subtract all the out fees since Lerner walked in the door we show a loss of -£97m. (a sizeable chunk of the reported £133m owed to him by the club) maybe i should refer to it as the same figure we received some time before from the sale of Stewart Downing I'll find a way of linking the sale of stewart downing to Lamberts transfer kitty if it kills me

When are the next set of accounts due out? Would be nice to know exactly where we are on that front now, instead of all the hear say and educated guesses.

Club will probably release a statement march / april / may time for 2011/2012.

Does anyone know when the EUFA financial fair play rules are supposed to come in effect? I know we are opposing it along with Chelsea, Fulham and WBA. I'm not sure how much this has forced the clubs arm in dropping the wage bill. Im too cynical so i think if we aint turning a profit we cant make the loan repayments to the holding company! 

we carry the 4th highest debt of all the clubs after Man Utd obviously thanks to the Glaziers, Fulham and Newcastle. Ashley and Al Fayed have smaller interest repayments than randy though. at 90% of turnover our percentage of turnover spent on wages was the second highest in the league behind Man City unsurprisingly as they were the only club to show a defecit (114%)

In contrast Man Utd (ok their turnover is HUGE) showed 46% of their turnover spent on wages. Not surprisingly 4 of the 5 clubs with the biggest turnovers back the new proposals (Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool, Spurs)

the downing money, like the money from most of the rest of our sales, was spent on the massive deficit the club runs up paying wages every year

 

when we sell someone the money doesnt sit in a box waiting to be spent on players, it's used for the running of the club

thanks for that P3te. I shall spend my time more wisely at Villa Park and stop looking for a box of money to tell me whether the transfer kitty cupboard is bare or not. Should save me hours. 

The point was about whether Lerner had "handed" Lambert a kitty of £20m and whether that was from him or not. 

Following the last published accounts from 2010/11 It was announced that we were on a costcutting exercise. we know the starting position (£54m loss in the previous year. turnover at £92m wages at £83m) Lerner we know put £25m in (effectively financing the Bent + Makoun initial payments) he may have put in more in the form of loans through the holding company we dont know for sure. We know since may 2011 we had to fork out for Mccleish both in and out and Lambert coming in. 

Overall wages have surely fallen with the departures of Downing, A Young, L Young, Makoun (loan), Lowry, Carew, Salifou, NRC, Hogg, Osbourne, Friedel, Pires, Forrester, Bradley (loan return), Beye, Collins, Cuellar, Heskey and then Makoun [out again!], Delfouneso, Warnock, Hutton, Johnson (all loan) since those figures were released

although the savings are slightly offset by the arrivals of NZogbia, Hutton, Given, Jenas (loan), Benteke, Vlaar, Lowton, Bennett, KEA, Westwood, Bowery, Holman, Makoun (loan return)

I can only guess Lambert and McMuppet are/were on less then Houllier too

With attendances down you would assume that the commercial wing have also seen a downturn in profits so with wages at 90% of turnover in 2010/2011 we may well have seen overall spend drop but who knows what percentage of the wage bill the turnover is covering last season and this? we will probably have to wait until march/april/may time to find out the cost of mccleish's reign. 

The exodus following Houlliers brief stint: 

So 2011/12 Transfer balance sheet  +20.600.800 £ (The ONLY time under Lerner we've received more than we spent) 

I have said before round here I'm glad McMuppet never got his hands on the other £20m!! Whether thats because Man Utd and Liverpool's payments were staggered over time or whether the club decided to spread the money it took over 2 years to get to the new TV deal who knows? but since the last publicly acknowleged cash injection from Randy the money we've spent on transfers can clearly be traced back imo. culminating in having to sell Collins to free up the cash and wages for Vlaar.

so for me to paraphrase that all as "effectively the downing money" I think seems pretty fair myself  

Harewood? He's not even on that list ..

I knew it was a mistake to name him! I know, but he was one of the ones you missed off from the timeframe you seemed to be talking about

But to answer your question .. No. i don't want the ones on your list back. My point was that whether the players on that list were good, bad, indifferent, crap or whatever is irrelevant.. & obviously Heskey, & Beye were among the worst on that list as you well know, but the fact still remains that the squad was decimated & we were in desperate need of extra bodies in pre season. The squad was desperately threadbare when Lambert arrived & a budget of 20m was nowhere near enough to fill all those holes with quality players & that i actually thought he had done Ok in this regard.

 

So do you disagree with that?

Nope, totally agree with the rest of the original post too, just wasn't entirely sure on your point with the list of players we've let go. 

What i meant by "Myth" was that i have lost count of the posts on here claiming Randy had been generous by giving Lambert this 20m transfer kitty. It is often implied that this is in some way a further personal investment on Randy's part taking his personal investment to up to 250m etc when it is in fact just money generated by transfers..So the Myth i am getting at is the Myth that this was an additional personal investment of some sort by our owner. Randy has indeed invested a lot of money in the club of course he has, but i don't see how reinvesting money generated by player sales can be classed in the same light. 

 

Lambert was given 20m yes but he was also given a very threadbare squad which was desperately short in numbers. He inherited a squad that had survived by the skin of it's teeth last season & had been decimated still further since then with the losses of Collins, Cuellar & Petrov amongst others. Yes the quality of many of those sold/released was poor anyway but we did have some "Stars" & established Internationals in that lot too which have not been replaced... So yeah i'd prefer a number of those back here for sure although thats never going to happen obviously.

Ok so a myth that it came out of Randy's pockets, I haven't seen that. But you're 100% correct that Lambert's transfer kitty was just money we still had from previous sales (effectively the Downing money). 

Just for the record im pleased with the signings of Lowton, Vlaar, Benteke, I'd rather Bennett to Warnock, I think Westwood will become a regular and it's a shame KEA seems to be the one who isnt adapting to the pace of the premier league when he is probably the one of all his signings we couldn't afford to fail because we knew Stan was not gonna be available. 

It has cheered me up a bit remembering all the crap players that I dont have to watch any more though