cheltenham_villa

the opportunity cost is also a good point. No club have built a stadium or stand and continued to invest in the team. Its one or the other. Personally right now i think the club has decided that money in the team is the most important thing.

im not sure this is now true. i think the demand for terrace view and the other one is now growing. Ive seen some games particularly over xmas where we sold out. Its probably more accurate to say that Villa has typically been targeted at Joe Punter and none of us feel that comfortable with the gentrification. Ive now doubt it will be a success though like it is at every ground, it just means more families and tourists.

Unfortunately I think the top 6 is the top 6. The stats around what those teams have won in the last 20 years and how many of the champions league places they've taken are ridiculous. I personally don't believe it's possible to challenge them or join them (except maybe for the odd season) and sadly I'd rather teams didn't risk bankruptcy by trying. Very sad opinion I know.

Personally I'm in favour of it, Dr Xi nearly cost us our club, any move towards the majority of clubs running sustainably is a positive for me.

Could it be someone they see a profit in? Like an azazz, bring in for small money and sell on. Very much depends on the price.

The reality is a lot of companies are returning to the office because they believe that the mass of people is more efficient organised in this way. Its also very likely that certain jobs are best organised from an office. Ive done a lot of work on Call Centre efficiency, all of the metrics point to the fact that call centres work better from an office. The individuals involved didnt necessarily have wfh space and preferred the social interactions that came with office work, the individuals dealt and answered more calls, the customer dialling in felt like the service they received was more professional and their calls were answered better, The irony is I made these conclusions while working from home. My role has me running many analytics teams globally and being in an office would still mean being on the phone. I do accept though that I have to spend a part of my year travelling to locations in order to build relationships and collaborate. I also often laugh at the fact that the VT wfh chat is most active during the day

Got quite a few mates who's marriages ended at the butlins weekend events.

Have you got a link to this anywhere, id never heard of it and struggled to find anything that confirms its coming in.

it could be that weve agreed a lower price if we loan him back, the loan also keeps him off our wage bill for now. Seems odd though when we know we want a new right back.

The problem with us working out which players to sell for 60-100m is that probably only Chelsea, arsenal, United, Liverpool and city are paying those fees. So not only do we need a player worth that, we also need to strengthen a rival and they need a player in that position. I think Watkins is most sellable on this basis, or maybe even Pau. I think it's more likely though we see 3 or 4 moving to create the money. Really we need to hope the players can go up another level

The big challenge with selling luiz is that probably those trying to buy him are also our rivals.

Contrary to other experiences, we all found it a piece of piss. Find a light coloured wall, make sure its day time so you don't need lights on and you dont get a shadow.

So the real question about the decision to rebuild the north stand is how the entity that owns it gets a return on investment. So for 100m investment, that feels like a significant rent increase. It also makes me wonder how much can truly be hecks impact, to my knowledge he's not involved In the organisation that owns the stadium.

I noted labours suggested approach to getting long term school absentees back is free school breakfast. While I think making sure every kid is fed is really important, I just don't understand the logic. If parents haven't been sending kids to school, or children have been playing truant for a long time, why will more school change that. Help me understand the link.

@blandy do you know how stadium investment works as part of FFP when the club doesn't own the stadium? Now the stadium is part of a group, could the owners if they wanted choose to just throw money at improvements? I assume this would see an increase in our rent. Been wondering for a while who needs to make the investment here.

I would imagine Nassef has stayed quite clear of the deal. Commercial deals are so heavily scrutinised now, particularly those where parties have a conflict of interest.

I dont think it's anything more than a guess, but it's probably a sensible guess. I can't imagine villa adding more seats without increasing the premium seating. Maybe we will see them linked to the lower grounds. I think you're safe on the Doug Ellis half way line, I think the closeness to the away fans would prevent them making it premium. More likely to extend premium seating in the trinity.

This is my assumption. It's very difficult to do both and the start to the season has presented an opportunity that many wanted but maybe didn't truly believe was possible. Imagine making champions league but not being able to really improve the squad in the summer because we've put all our eggs in the north stand basket

I don't believe any clubs have seen significant ground investment without it impacting player purchases. Arsenal didn't spend for years, spurs had windows without a single player signing. Both of those clubs had squads that could ride this out a bit and I'm not convinced we are in that position. Add to that the rule movement that Everton have experienced around stadium interest contributing towards FFP and this project alongside team improvements may no longer be viable. For me it seems sensible right now for us to pause and focus on the team. The revenue from champions league will outweigh that from stadium enhancements.

One thing that confused me. The media led me to believe in January we would be seeing Saudi players returning as they had some season break. Why would they be trying to sign players?

To be fair, many wrote Leon off this season as well, even Unai reduced him to largely sub appearances early on in the season. His transformation is spectacular but also still quite recent. He's probably started less than 50% of games this season. I wouldn't be surprised if Zaniola had started a similar amount.

Very happy with this signing. He's part of a pretty electric front three at home. Finishing may need some work but who can't you say that for. Was very hard for Burnley to double up on Bailey or Watkins which creates a lot of opportunities

The "huge amount to spend" is this based on anything or a hunch. I see others quoting ffp challenges.

This is really tough, I went for Watkins but we probably don't have a stand out. Pau, Mcginn, Luiz, Emi, Watkins all worth. Bailey probably in the conversation but I'd say that's a bit of recency bias and based on his improvement.

I dont think Unai is slow to recognise that, I just don't think he has a choice. Dendonker gets a very limited amount of minutes, I've no doubt we will see a replacement in Jan or the summer but you can't fix everything at once.