flashingqwerty

Since Xia has taken over the wage bill has dropped from 80-90m to 45-50m so the wage bill hasnt escalated here either...

Sarkic's contract expires at the end of the month i believe

if people didnt know there were money issues at the club for the last 12 months then they've had their heads in the sand. All the signs were there is you cared to see them. Loan players not purchases, wage restrictions, Bruce's moaning about resourcing, constant talk of FFP. It was hardly a secret.

freudian slip? ??

wow - i guess i missed that one! Shocking!

Get out while you still can Jack, save your career!

did he ever claim to be a billionaire? the only credible source i saw had him between 300 and 400 million and mostly in assets.

numbers came from Football Manager so whilst not 100% they arent usually far from the mark. plus we know SHA offered him 100k pw as he has said so himself. so whilst it may not be 100k it certainly would not be half that

unfortunately he still has another year to run

I wanted to take a look at the numbers being passed around of the savings that need to be made. The most common set of numbers i've seen are that Wage bill needs to be reduced by 17m We need to raise 23m to cover operational losses When i first saw these numbers i was convinced this meant that a fire sale would ensue and we would lose the majority of our best players. But having done the math i am not so sure now... Taking loan players and players out of contract as follows: Johnstone - 12k pw - 624k pa Bunn - 17.5k pw - 910k pa Sarkic - 1k pw - 52k pa Samba - 15k pw - 780k pa Hutton - 30k pw - 1.56m pa Terry - 100k pw - 5.2m pa Snodgrass - 40k pw - 2.08m pa Onomah - 30k pw - 1.56m pa Agbonlahor - 55k pw - 2.86m pa Grabban - 29k pw - 1.508m pa That adds up to a saving of 17.134m so wages taken care of. Raising 23m might be a little trickier - we may find that we have to sell Jack if we want to improve other areas of the team. But without those players its glaringly obvious that we need: At least 1 GK if Gollini is still set on leaving At least 1 CB, probably 2 At least 1 wide player, possibly 2 A replacement for Jack, should we sell him So, not as much needed as first thought. But to achieve it, would likely mean selling some others and replacing them with players with smaller wage demands. I still dont want SB to be the man to do it personally, but its much less of a shift than i expected, so i could understand why some might want to give him another shot

ive watched the u23s at least 20 times this season and i dont recall a single game where we set out to defend deep and soak up pressure and hope to counter. Saying there was one move once that was similar to one move once in the u23s means they play the ways is insane! By that measure i can say thr grealish run in the playoff final is similar to one kevin de bruyne made for mancity that means we play the same style as mancity. Sorry im afraid thats just not how it works.

davis is the only player we have that plays that way

thats the thing though SB was specifically brought in as a short term fix to get us up. it/he hasnt worked to that end and due to ffp next season will be another rebuild regardless of who is in charge. As we are coming into a time of severe austerity a short term fix to me at least is no longer an option and SB is not the man to instill a new era of longetivity and forward planning. i can say this with some certainty as he has never done it in his career but has had opportunity. As a club as the highest level we need to decide what type of club we want to be and start putting structures in place to build to that end. there is no evidence of ' a villa way' to date. the u23 side dont play the same style as the 1st team making integration harder than it should be. We need to pick a style and apply it from grass roots to 1st team and choose our coaches and our players based on that style. i think anything short of this will either see us remain in the 2nd tier for a very long time or become a yoyo club. i dont fancy us being that so id rather we stop now and accept some mediocity while we build something sustainable for the future than continue being an also ran.

i agree with most of what you say here Tro which is why so many of SBs transfers baffle me. Its like he looked at whoscored and just selected the players with the best scores he could get without thinking about balance, style, shape or tactics. Im sure he isnt alone in those decisions but he is culpable. We should never have signed Hogan for instance and i dont think Grabban was the right call either despite his modest success. Id have loved crouch to return. I think cases could be made for lansbury, onamah, tuanzebe, they were just what could be got not what was needed - numbers over contribution. Put shortly SB frustrates me. He admits when he makes a mistake, great, but he will proceed to continually make and admit the same mistake ad neausium (sp?). i dont see that changing and thus why proted or not, i dodnt want him in charge.

and whose job is it to ensure we have the players to perform to plan? Yes, the manager. So even in your defence of him youre pointing out his failure.

so predictable that SB didnt see it coming...

next season will be bleak - and i will tell you why: since getting relegated our revenue excluding parachte money has declined year on year as you would expect. parachute money reduces dramatically next season. if we were to take the last 12 months published revenue (and bear in mind this is higher than what we can expect in the next 12 months) and the reduced parachute payments, to avoid FFP we need to effectively half our wage bill. if we kept our core 7/8 players wed need to pretty much get rid of all the rest of our senior squad to achieve this as that core takes up most of our wage bill (im including mccormack and richards in the keep pot as i cant see us being able to offload them). That means anyone we bring in needs to be on very small wages to avoid FFP. so unless we find some new revenue stream we are in serious trouble

i watched quite a lot of cardiff this season. they often play better football than we do but they also have pace in the side and have players capable of bullying the opposition as and when needed. they can and do play multiple different styles and always have a plan b - something villa under bruce do not have. its one thing playing defensively when you have a big man up top and pace throughout your midfield - but we stopped playing with a big man up top some time ago and whilst we have 1 or 2 players who can run fast they are ponderous on the ball which negates their running speed. to play good counter attacking football the midfield needs players who not only run fast ( of which i think we only have 2) but also think fast (of which i think we only have 1). this 11 wasnt built with our 'style of play' in mind - its an assembly of players who did well at other cĺubs playing a multitude of different styles. i see no efgort to assemble a team to suit how we play or a group that offers us the ability to play multiple ways. it appears we went and bought the 'best of the rest' without any plan to turn them into a cohesive unit and i believe ultimately this was our undoing. i dont believe SB has what it takes to assemble a squad with an identity and strong playing style that offers fluidity and flexibility- he is much like oleary in that he wants an honest bunch who work hard and he couldnt even get that right.

Unfortunately i doubt much of our current squad will be here next season...

Sorry but i cant disagree more. Literally everyone within football, manahers and pundits alike, said to neat fulham you take the game to them not play deep and on the defensive. Starting the game with a defensive sysyem cost us the game and hopefully cost Bruce his job. If you are not embarassed then fair play to you. But ive been ashamed of the way villa have played for nearly a decade and today bar 15 or 20 minutes was as bad as any ive seen in that time. A one legged mouse had more chance of scoring on his own than our 11 did the 1st half thats how poor we were. And our inability to retain possession and use it effectively rests firmly on the managers shoulders.

Ha! Spoken like a man that doesnt watch many championship or u23 games. if there are more than 3 u23s capable of playing in the championship let alone getting promotion id be very surprised!

itll take 3/4 more years now to assemble a squad capable of promotion. this squad will be decimated over the summer and with little to no cash to spend and massive wage cuts needed we will be playing the u23s next season ready or not

and yet green plays every week for the uw3s and doesnt even make the bench. WTF!!!

if bruce is villa manager monday morning, im done with this club. absolute embarrassment. every man and his dog said if villa start defensively they will lose. mastermind bruce decides to ignore EVERYONE and play defensively from the start. GUESS WHAT? WE LOST YOU INEPT CLOWN!

this should be bruces last game in charge this match epitimises why he is the wrong man for the job