eholm

1 minute ago, TheEgo said:

Yeah 40:40:20 isn't true

Thanks for clarifying, mate. 

1 minute ago, Delphinho123 said:

How do you know this, mate?

Its being reported widely on twitter by journos and across media outlets that a full TO is more of a formality and is not unusual business practice to do this when you consider we desperately needed the cash today/Monday for tax/payroll obligations. The full TO will have to be ratified by EFL via 'Fit and Proper Persons' test which is a notoriously slow process. This 'interim' situation is win-win for all concerned and means that TX can skulk away in the very near future.

As for the 40-40-20, I've heard this on twitter and @Thatcherlover has said this with some certainty. I know the guy has some doubters but he does seem to have his ear in and around a few things Villa.....

Just now, Delphinho123 said:

I'm guessing that if they now own 55% of the club, this isn't just a loan with a ridiculously high interest rate? They must have a vested interest.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Xia pushed out completely in the future. These two don't strike me as complete morons like he does and won't want that clown around the place for long.

With all the bad news floating around lately, it couldnt get any worse so this has to be a good thing. 

Now, let's please please please keep Grealish and Chester and just sell the rest of them. 

 

Virtually guaranteed TX is here in name only now, mate. (new set up is 40%-40%-20%)  Full TO will be completed soon.

1 minute ago, Fowlersrs said:

I think this has been done to essentially save the club and keep the wolf from the door bills wise..

Its looking like Xia gets to save face and gets a return on his investment/gamble with the club. And our new overlords can take there time to sort the rest of the ownership out..

Atleast we can see what these guys are worth and that its true, with xia it was all smoke and daggers!!

Indeed mate. If you look at the final part of their statement:

'We look forward to working with Dr Tony to undertake a thorough assessment and evaluation of the Club in the coming weeks and our priority is to strengthen the squads and structures ahead of the upcoming season and beyond'

I have no doubt they are the 'owners-elect' as it were. Two men of this level of wealth will in no way want to just be ba major shareholder and have TX any where the club in the near future. Why would they want him around when they will have had access to all of the books and seen the criminal mis-management he has presided over?

Patience is the key here.

1 minute ago, hippo said:

Still cautious - who is managing aston villa now  (not the playing side) - ?  - I mean who controls us. That statements talks about supporting existing ambitions  - they don't sound like new owners just investors. 

Business semantics, IMO, mate. Comments to keep TX publically viable....

Just now, PieFacE said:

I'm guessing they only part own it right now? 

At this precise moment in time they own 55% of the Club, so they are right to say 'part owners'......I guarantee within a few months, maybe weeks, they will be the full owners of the Club. I think this is alluded to when they say

'We understand that we are stewards of Aston Villa on behalf of the fans and we take that responsibility seriously.

“We look forward to working with Dr Tony to undertake a thorough assessment and evaluation of the Club in the coming weeks and our priority is to strengthen the squads and structures ahead of the upcoming season and beyond.”

You wouldn't use that terminology if you were merely providing a loan to the Club. the 2-tier approach is a win-win for both parties, see my earlier comments re TX, and enables the immediate security of the Club whilst allowing time to complete a full takeover.

1 minute ago, supermon said:

Yeah I'm a little sceptical with Xia still here as co-chairman, what the heck does all this mean? Do we keep Grealish n co, can we fire Bruce and get Henry in lol

Face-saving for Xia......only matter of time before we get a low-key update from AVFC that NSWE has purchased TX shares and are now the owners.

4 minutes ago, Villa_Vids said:

Egyptian businessman with funding from Qatar it seems, well this is what is being reported by Matt Hughes from The Times. 

Yep, Hughes sounds very confident that the TO will happen; majority control followed by full TO at later date.

Gotta love Bruce. I know it’s only a friendly but plays a back three which allows you to play 2 strikers without sacrificing defensive stability.....then plays Kodj up front on his own!!!! Dear god!!!!

45 minutes ago, mikeyp102 said:

Thanks for being so condensending, my head isn’t the sand. I’ve said that we have issues, I just don’t see them as being as bad as everyone says. Again, accounts are not out, so apart from believing everything you read from media outlets that have no extra information how do you know we are haemorrhaging money?? 

There ARE plenty of clubs in worse positions than us. Look down the leagues and you will see, hell even Crystal Palace with all the premier league money have had to sell half their squad. 

So as not to repeat all the known facts that have been stated by other posters, surely you realise that unless a new owner (or even just a new investor) is found pretty much immediately we will enter Admin? To say we have 'issues' is a huge understatement. Its not a case of 'believing all the media outlets', it's simply a case of taking a holistic look at everything that has happened since the POF from missed payments, TX confirming he needs new investment, TX leveraging anything he can to get cash (as per Companies House docs) etc, etc. You sound like an intelligent guy so i really do not understand how you believe that things 'aren't that bad'? I admire your balanced view in regards to your perceived lack of facts but the facts ARE out there and the Club is never going to come out and confirm that we are on the brink of Administration!! I just hope that this week TX agrees  a sale as, if not, you wont need to wait for the next set of accounts to tell you where we are. If it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck.....

10 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

We've currently got two strands to our financial issues -

1) Cashflow.  Our outgoings are far greater than our income.  This will be as a result of wages, deferred payments on incoming transfers (like buying a sofa from DFS), running costs, loan repayments, etc.  We need to cut costs AND increase income or we're going to cease to exist as a football club.  Any new owner will be able to put some cash in for the short-term to keep the wolf from the door, but we need self-generated income because of -

2) FFP.  We are limited in the amount of loss we can make across a 3-year period.  We're making a lot of losses, and have done for the last 2 years.  This is year 3 and we're losing more money than ever.  Even if Sheikh Mansour got bored of Man City and decided to buy us, there's no way around this in the short-term without self-generated income.  We could be fined, docked points, or face a transfer embargo.  Or all three.

Both of the above, especially in combination, mean ANY new owner will likely have to sell off the family jewels.  Issue 1) would be resolved by a new owner, but the amount we're losing every month would mean huge sanctions as part of Issue 2).

So yes, any new owner could be different to what we've already got AND would need the Grealish funds because the current owner has made a right royal mess of things.

Accurate, concise summary. Describes our current position and future position perfectly. 

6 hours ago, Nabby said:

No one is going to invest as a minor shareholder to let someone who has overseen our current situation keep control ..at this point ,given we are selling off car parks to keep afloat anyone interested in us will just wait it out until we go into Administration and pick us up for a quid 

Dead right, we can all see this, we can all understand this apart from one man. @mykeyb is also correct though when he says that TX isn’t a willing seller. Whether it be due to a stubborn attitude or, more likely, a certain (unrealistic) value required in order to pay back original investors, TX will make this whole process long, slow and painful. Never has the phrase ‘death by a thousand cuts’ been so perfectly apt. 

Never been convinced by Bruce, however, I am now pretty nonplussed about our Manager whoever he his as the real issue is TX and his continued damaging ownership of our Club. Circular duscussions about SB all seem very secondary to me at this moment in time....

19 hours ago, jackbauer24 said:

My point is FFP is irrelevant to us at the moment. If we were worried about FFP, you wouldn't sell £40m of players on the cheap to save a possible small fine. You'd hold to them to get their true value and make a proper dent in FFP regulations. Get a fine of 5m but sell them for £20m in January or whenever and you're £15m up. Simple economics. You only sell assets on the cheap if YOU desperately need money, not to balance the books for an audit.

These firesales are NOTHING to do with FFP and everything to do with needing cash asap to pay back whoever we owe, government or loan shark. It might be an added plus that we avoid a further fine but it's not the reason for these sales at all.

It's going to be a lot harder to stay within FFP regs if you're selling assets for a fraction of their true value. This is about asset stripping.

Completely agree, I’ve posted similar on the TX thread. 

1 hour ago, Jareth said:

Just watched the Sky Sports video as thought I'd missed something going on what you say. Yeah, can't argue with what Bruce says, he appears to know as much as we do about Tony's plans. He has gone out and recorded that interview and the club interview with the intention of being brutally honest and the first thing he emphasises is meeting FFP - then later puts keeping the club up and running in the same basket. Not sure of the significance, but hopefully in time we will get a better understanding of the accounts and how far exactly we are away from FFP. If all is true about spending strands of future income on last season's promotion push then it is absolutely ringing true that we are well behind on FFP and have to make sacrifices to get back on track. I asked once if the club was truly screwed financially then why have we not been punished yet by FFP authorities who monitor accounts in advance of the season ending - I take it now that we probably will be done if we don't sell these players.

But that's all FFP, I'd say financial peril is the club spending more than it earns - only time will tell but clearly we are not going to have the same overheads by the close of the window as we had last season.

Some valid points there mate. Maybe one thing we can all agree on is that TX needs to sell up to, hopefully, a more effective and capable owner/s who will have the business acumen to run us effectively so that we are never in this position again. Time will tell....

Yep, appreciate that Jareth. Surely, though, one event that is as clear as day is Bruce questioning the financial wealth of TX and then stating that players need to be sold to ‘keep the Club up and running AND comply with FFP’. For me, this is a crystal clear indication that we are indeed in financial peril....and that a swift resolution is desperately needed. 

1 minute ago, Jareth said:

I get the impression Tony knows well now to stay clear and release the odd statement.

Anger and frustrations aside - I am trying to make sense of events and where we stand. We do not have a player embargo (blues) we do not have players on strike (Bolton) - we do not have any major payments missed (as far as we/the media know). As Bruce put it simply, we are 'behind' on FFP thus player sales.

Are we to assume that the club is not in immediate financial peril?

Is this a genuine question? We know that ANY investment will not improve FFP so why us TX so eager to get external investment in.....simply because he does not have the money to fund the day to day run of the club in the short to medium term, let alone the long term. The guy is a charlatan with no cash if his own hence his necessity for financial assistance. He is also too stubborn. or too indebted to his current investors, to sell the club at a realistic price. Even SB questioned if TX has enough money or not!!

I don’t understand your reluctance to accept that TX is skint and that unless he gets some investment soon admin is a very real possibility.....unless of course he uses player sales monies to keep the Club running instead of complying with our FFP obligations. 

Let’s be honest though.....promotion is a non-starter this season. If JG, JC and JK all go that will be 7 first teamers gone over the Summer (incl the loanees and JT). With no money to spend and a huge reliance on our young players, there is no way we will get near the promotion mix. I would be very pleased with mid-table security as I believe staying up is our main aim. 

Although heavily criticised,  and rightly so, Hogan could still work playing up top in a 2 with KD. Also, with JG going I believe 2 up top is possibly the way to go this season. Our main source of creativity will be out wide and so with crosses a plenty we need 2 strikers on the pitch. Clutching, maybe, but it could work sufficiently to keep us safely mid-table. Appreciate though that the lack of 2 CMs able to play in that system is an issue that maybe tricky to solve....

6 minutes ago, Robbie09 said:

I hope he gets the toxic reception he deserves if he ever sets foot in B6 on a matchday again.

IMO, Absolutely no chance he ever attends VP again. I cannot see him ever returning to the UK. He may we’ll be a complete fraud and a liar.....but he’s not stupid. 

1 hour ago, markavfc40 said:

I am not sure him being one of the highest paid managers comes into it now does it. If we sack him we have to pay up a year on his contract, compensate his backroom team and then bring someone else/another backroom team in which combined will cost us more than keeping him. Of course that may be very short term thinking but that is exactly where we are at now looking simply to get through the next few months.

Like you say the initial minimum expectation, given how the squad will have been ripped to pieces, will be to keep us in this league. I don't think we can really look beyond that at the moment without knowing how the squad will look come August.

Summarises the current situation perfectly. 

2 minutes ago, TheEgo said:

Just to add to the mess and confusion

 

 

 

Oh just **** off Xia. Yet more crap with no substance. Sell up and get out of our Club.