Stephen_Evans

10 minutes ago, Ingram85 said:

Any proper pics of the shirts/socks and GK kit?

Indeed, the launch website actually made it so difficult to see the thing!

20 minutes ago, Villa_Vids said:

Best shirts ever. 

Absolutely, if you don't like Villa kits and want to support West 'am . 

50 minutes ago, Shropshire Lad said:

Apart from the season we were relegated with him as owner, of course. And the 1994/95 season was a close run thing too, down to the last day of the season that one went to.

Ellis was shit. Lerner was shit. Xia unfortunately appears to be shit too.

They all have different ways of proving it, which keeps it varied at least.

Not forgetting dangerous flirtations with relegation in 1988-89, 1990-91 (skin of our teeth both times).  2002-03 and 2005-06 wouldn’t have needed too much else to go wrong either for it to have ended in disaster.

So yeah, I count 8 genuine relegation battles under “good old” Doug Ellis (including 1986-87 when it actually happened)....and that’s if we let him off 1968-69 when he became Chairman half way through and 1969-70 (which really was Docherty’s fault).

There has also been an allotment of shares at Recon Group UK Limited, which is the parent of Recon Football Limited, the parent of Aston Villa Football Club Limited.

14 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

I can't remember a single season where we wore our new kits on the last game of the season. They always seem to be released a couple of weeks before the actual season.

I can remember two off the top of my head.  Last game of 2000/01 (v Coventry) and last game of 2002/03 (v Sunderland).

10 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Anyway what do the ITK and finance lads make of the new documents for Companies House.

Apparently 70 million new 1 pound shares have been issued.

Total shares/Statement of Capital GBP 142,061,725?

The confirmation statement as at 22 May showed the number of shares at 84,938,182.  57,123,543 have been allotted, taking the new total to 142,061,725.

17 hours ago, Stephen_Evans said:

I wish they had confirmed how many fans are  eligible in each category.  I’m a season ticket holder and my brother has 5 matches from this season.   So I have to wait until Sunday so that we can sit together.  The “subject to availability” proviso only seems to apply to the last two categories but not the first two so presumably everyone with 3+ matches is guaranteed?

I just asked the ticket office whether the allocation covers the first two categories. “It should do”.  That’s a frustrating answer in my view, as surely you don’t pluck the 3 match criteria out of the air? It must be based on something.

I said to the person I spoke to that if they cannot guarantee a ticket for everyone in the first two categories, they should update the second category so that it says “subject to availability” like the subsequent categories.

I wish they had confirmed how many fans are  eligible in each category.  I’m a season ticket holder and my brother has 5 matches from this season.   So I have to wait until Sunday so that we can sit together.  The “subject to availability” proviso only seems to apply to the last two categories but not the first two so presumably everyone with 3+ matches is guaranteed?

10 hours ago, a m ole said:

It’s probably as simple as we took the full home kit with white shorts either thinking it would be fine as teams are sometimes allowed to play  with the same colour shorts if the rest is different.

 It’s the referees discretion so he likely asked us to use different shorts and all we had brought was black - possibly we had the full away kit but it would have taken too long to do a full swap.

I’m always happy to blame the referee! Will never forget that fiasco against West Ham at home in 2009!

14 hours ago, sexbelowsound said:

This.

It wasn't a last minute fashion choice. 

But that’s the thing, the fixtures came out last June so quite a bit of time to plan for some blue shorts.  We could have used last year’s.

I also found it irritating that the U23s had to wear all black against Swansea in the Premier League Cup final.  (Same at Ipswich and Sheffield Wednesday away  in the Championship, neither of whom wore their away kit at our home ground.)

Stick some blue shorts with the rest of the home kit and then we look like Villa.  Though personally I have never been unable to understand the problem with both teams wearing the same colour shorts.

Someone behind the scenes at our club is colour blind.  Black shorts with the claret and blue shirts today.  So naff.

We have now surpassed our record points tally under any points-scoring system! The previous best was 1987-88 (78 points) under Graham Taylor.

Did anyone notice we're not actually called Aston Villa anymore?

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/00046572

Although in fairness, this is only one of the historic companies associated with the football club.  The corporate structure seems quite complicated!

2 hours ago, Hev said:

 

Before the game on Sunday, I noticed the lovely new replacement banner on the North Stand and then, on looking further,  noticed that whilst it looks great with the Badge added at either end, unfortunately, there appear to be a couple of errors ?   The correct wording is, I believe, "Shaw, Williams, prepared to venture down the left. There's a good ball in for Tony Morley" . . . etc but the banner says  Williams prepared to adventure down the left.  There's a goodball in . . .

Pedantic of me I guess but it's a shame, especially as the commentary is so iconic .  Still onwards and upwards

 

 

Best not read the programme too often.  It's a pedant's nightmare!

If the season ends well as we all hope, and the club release a DVD, please can there be a DVD menu option to turn off the commentary.  The commentary for the Blues highlights on the website, by way of example, is so annoying and the sound mixing suppresses the noise of the crowd. 

Can they get Rob Bishop to name his price for editing the programme again? I’m afraid the last two editors lack the number one quality required of an editor - attention to detail.  There are so many mistakes, week after week.

Secondly, the visual design itself is excellent, but in terms of actual content, there was more quality (and probably a higher word count) in the mid-90s 32 page editions then in the current 84 page version.

Can they please ask the media team at the club to stop this “Villans” nonsense.  As in, “what are your thoughts, Villans?”, “Come on you Villains”.  And stop the cringeworthy use of the fist pumping emoji on social media.

14 hours ago, AVTuco said:

Deleted.

I wish!

28 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

That's the agenda for the meeting next week - if there's anything pressing that you feel is missing from it, please let us know.

(Pardon the strange numbering - I'm having formatting trouble)

 

I would quite like my point about the match day programme put forward.  The standard has been genuinely awful in the last couple of years.  See previous page for details.

2 hours ago, tismyk said:

Arsenal will never change their traditional  home strip and neither should we, if you want something different there's always TJMaxx

Exactly, no club has protected their visual identity better than Arsenal.  Even down to things like never pairing their home shirt with anything other than their white home shorts.

12 hours ago, chefdoc2000 said:

last one I'm tired!!!

Nice.   But I would much prefer an Aston Villa kit. 

I appreciate this is well down the Club's priority list, but as a long-time collector of the Villa News and Record programme, I have to say standards have dropped alarmingly in the past few years.  I spot dozens of mistakes every game: grammar, facts, typos etc.  Plus the general tone has become increasingly dumbed-down.  The graphic design and photography remains excellent, in fairness.  But when I compare the content with only a few years back, particularly when Rob Bishop was editor, the decline is very obvious.

Tom Otrebski is (I presume) being paid to edit the programme.  It's time he stepped up the quality and the standards or made way for a proper editor/journalist.

This may sound harsh, but having read 30 years' worth of Villa programmes, I do feel something needs to be done to protect an historic and formerly world-beating publication.

42 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

ITK!

the pitch is being lowered in the summer

Tell us more!  Do you know why they are doing it?  Are they looking to increase capacity by building downwards, like at the Nou Camp many years ago?