ender4

7 hours ago, turvontour said:

It's interesting the bookies have us as odds on to win the second leg, and basically second favourites to win the competition behind Fiorentina. 

That's just the bookies who either haven't got round to changing their odds yet, or already have a lot of punters who had already bet on Villa to win. 

Look at Betfair with it's live odds for example...

Fiorentina - 1.5 /1

Olympiacos - 2.1 /1

Villa - 4.3 /1

Club Brugge - 6.6 /1

15 minutes ago, onmeedson said:

It's Tranmere all over again.

What happened with Tranmere?

31 minutes ago, Philosopher said:

I feel the defensive side of his game is the only real weakness other than sometimes holding on to the ball too long. On the left this can be targeted. So I'd prefer to see him behind Ollie where the if he gets caught out defensively he isn't exposing our left back or trying to cover for the left back. As both our lefts backs aren't the best defensively.

I'm pretty sure Emery will drill the defensive side into him. That's probably the easiest part to teach if you already have the other attributes for your role anyway.

40 minutes ago, Philosopher said:

 Can't wait for his 20th prem goal! Hope he is in line for a huge bonus.

But not so huge that it tips us over the FFP edge.

2 minutes ago, Wainy316 said:

Wish I could bottle the few minutes following the equaliser

Get Heck to record it and play it back through the speakers lol.

It was amazing atmosphere for most of the match last night, especially the first half. 

When we went 2-0 down, the crowd went quiet for a couple of mins, then the whole stadium went full volume to try and get the team back into it.

Only near the end when we were again 2 goals behind and Luiz missed the penalty, then the disappointment got to the crowd and we understandably struggled to keep the atmosphere.

But it was WOW loud from Villa fans for most of the night.

2 hours ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

I personally think we just want to be able to spend more money.

2 hours ago, villa4europe said:

this summer if/when we get CL? yep, it makes sense that the club want to splurge right now while we're sitting pretty, its a huge opportunity for us

I'm not sure this makes sense.  If we are close to the £105m limit, then we must be close to the UEFA PSR limits as well.  Next season we will hit the UEFA limit well before the PL limit so it makes no sense for us to push to increase the PL limit as we will be in Europe. 

What am i missing here?

4 hours ago, CarryOnVilla said:

I have no idea how good Olympiacos are now days, yet I feel like we have it in us to get the job done 

They were in the Europa League this season and dropped down to Conference League after finishing 3rd in their Europa group. 

They were in the Champions League last season and dropped down to Europa League after finishing 3rd in their CL group.

Their current manager won the Europa League last season with Sevilla.

Their current form is Won 5, Drawn 1 and Lost 0 in the last 6 matches.

16 hours ago, cheltenham_villa said:

I dont understand how people think this makes sense financially. 

We spent 30m on him, we pay him c120k per week. I'm not sure who is covering that but I doubt Milan will tbh. 

A replacement costs money and will also earn wages as well. 

Well it depends.  IF Milan would pay us £15m transfer fee, then we'd take that as that's the value left on him. 

We save £120k a week wages, buy a younger kid for around £15m (yes there are deals out there to be had for that price range  - see Rogers, Moreno).  We might only need to pay the younger player £60k a week and then we develop him over the next 12 months. 

From Carlos' viewpoint, he moves to Milan where he might not be 4/5th choice. He might accept a lower salary but for a longer contract. When his current contract with Villa finishes at age 33 he might struggle to get another decent contract.  So it could make sense for him as well. 

For Milan, they get a good ready-made player for £15m and say 60k a week wages for the next 4 years.

4 minutes ago, Genie said:

A prolonged period out of the CL will definitely cost them money. Their multi-year sponsorship deals will be ratcheted down if they are not playing in the big one for more than 1 year.

Yes agree with that.  It's multiple years not in CL which costs them.

2 hours ago, colhint said:

There's a good chance Utd won't qualify for Europe.. 10 years since that last happened . It'll affect sponsorships. 

7th in the league will be a European place once Man City win the FA Cup. No way are Man Utd falling down to 8th.

Also, they have long term fixed sponsorship.  A year out of Europe won’t make any difference to the money they earn if they didn’t have Europe for one season.

1 hour ago, fightoffyour said:

I find this source very hard to believe. No way would they have gotten served that quickly.

Bloke started queuing for that pint before the game.

31 minutes ago, abdulaziz1 said:

The good thing about Buendia and Mings is that we haven’t rushed them, we’re doing the same now with Ramsey after rushing him before.

Im not sure we did rush back Ramsey. The screw probably only started being painful after he played a couple of proper games at full intensity. 

17 minutes ago, thabucks said:

The repurposed Warehouse is far more in keeping IMO and honours Brums industrial past - cannot wait for its completion. I’d expect that further buildings would follow the same industrial aesthetic with red brick with arched & crittall windows. 

Is the Warehouse basically that academy building where they have the kids zone before the match? If so, I assume the outside will largely just stay the same and some bars and food areas put inside it? 

52 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

It can't be that much. It holds less than 7,000 and has the cheapest corporate facilities given the age of the stand. How much money will we be leaving off the table every home game if nothing ever happens?

Yeah it must be around £3 million a season maximum. 

29 minutes ago, Captain_Townsend said:

Last time I was I'm the North Stand I could not believe how bad it was. Is there any point making cosmetic changes to it, really?

The Doug Ellis is just as bad. 
 

The Upper Trinity is a little better but not on par with other newer stadiums (ie:anything built in the last 25 years).

34 minutes ago, Jas10 said:

 

I'd buy that, even with the weird badge in the middle.  A claret and gold lion badge on that kit would be amazing!

21 hours ago, Made In Aston said:

It sounds worse than it is. Wages have been covered for this season and next by the Qatar club. We just have to sell him after that or loan him out again for the remaining 12 months.

I doubt full wages have been covered. Maybe like 75% of wages, or maybe 50% of wages and a loan fee. 

We also don't know if the second year is an 'option' for the Qatari club to choose to activate. Nowhere was it reported as a fixed 2 year loan deal.

6 hours ago, Lichfield Dean said:

Oh look, an interesting thing has emerged

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/may/01/birmingham-city-council-accused-of-making-cuts-based-on-imagined-data

That's not even the worst bit. The worst part is that no-one at BCC can actually say how much money came in last year, how much money was paid out last year, and how much money they currently have in their bank accounts.  Not even sure how this is possible, but that's where they currently are at.

Quote

Tilsley said: “It is so bad that if I was to ask our director of finance: ‘How much money have we got in the bank today?’ nobody would be able to tell me. We’ve lost complete control over the financial management.”

5 hours ago, sidcow said:

 

Thing is, I don't understand why they need their own records for  calculation.  Surely they have X number of claimants who have come forwards?  Surely those claimants have to provide some kind of evidence of their employment and earning?  

The £760 million is what they are guessing they might pay out once everyone does come forward. They have no idea how many people that might be, nor how much each person might be entitled to.

14 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

So in a desperate bid to make it look like their policy of forcibly detaining people and sending them to Rwanda at a cost of more than a million quid a head, they've had the cracking idea of getting the first bloke on a plane by, erm...offering him 3 grand to piss off.

Hasn't it so far cost £0.5 BILLION per person? Sorry, i actually mean £500,000,000 + £3,000 = £500,003,000 per person.

2 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Someone has posted on skyscrapercity:

"Some sort of cryptic SM post today from Gabby Agbonlahor about filming a video for the club and saying exciting plans for the future and "the stadium is in good hands". I'd expect some sort of stadium update with this video"

What is skyscraper city?

2 minutes ago, nick76 said:

Just a general query out of interest, what made you want a season ticket 3-4 years ago and not before when they were easy to get?  I assume the availability of tickets when you want before put you off getting a season ticket whereas now it’s harder to get a GA ticket?

Follow up question to that, if we did build a 60k+ stadium and GA tickets were easily attainable any time would you go back to getting GA tickets when you want or would you still want a season ticket?

Good question. We were awful for a decade and basically lost every time I attended a match in the Premier League. I had no interest in attending many matches in the Championship.

What changed? I’m not sure. The interest in Premier League football after being in the Championship, Villa doing better rather than circling the drain and the optimism around that, lots of mates who all suddenly wanted to attend matches as well, post Covid wanting to make the most of live events rather than watching on TV, kids who also wanted to attend some matches, likeable players. Maybe a little of that PL football is an event nowadays that everyone wants to be at?

If we had easily available tickets in a 60k stadium, I’d still want the season ticket as I’ve now caught the bug of seeing Villa live. It’s also a cost saving compared to me having to spend £63/£50 a ticket this season. It would mean upping my attendance from 10-12 matches a season to 19 games.

2 hours ago, Mazrim said:

Right, I see.
In my own experience,  I know a lot of people who are members - purely because its the only way to get tickets, but on on the waiting list. Many of these are parents of kids who want to go and so they go too. May mates who are season ticket holders now have multiple kids who want season tickets, so yes they would be those who are members but want season tickets. My own extended family are mostly members who are happy to go to half the matches, a few existing season ticket holders.

I dont see why my experience would be unusual, therefore I reckon there's some who are member who are on the waiting list, but many more who are not. Like, maybe 10/90 split.
I hear from the club that there's over 35k on the waiting list. Now who knows how many follow through but most you'd think would or why bother?

There's no point go around the houses on this. You either think the demand is there for big crowds or you don't, but I do and I think the evidence supports it.

Yes agree. I have 8 memberships and 3 places on the season ticket waiting list. The 3 people go to most matches, the other 5 memberships are used to rotate between 20 people who all like to attend a few matches here and there. 
 

If we had a bigger ground with easy to get tickets, I think I could get 15 out of the 20 people to attend a lot of the matches.

2 hours ago, mrchnry said:

Next season will be 3 and a half seasons on the waiting list for me. Last year I went from in the 11 thousands to the 10 thousands. The demand is definitely there to fill 50k+ 

Similar here. When I joined the waiting list I was around 10,000th and over the 3-4 years I move closer by around 500 places per year.  That tells me that most people are taking up the chance of a season ticket when offered.