dn1982

6 hours ago, One For The Road said:

There are two sides to a football pitch. Our attack isn't up for debate. Its probably the best in the league on paper. 

Our defence is dreadful. That's the issue. Not the attack.

You don't piss this league with Nyland in goal and only one centre back.

Nyland is a good keeper for this level. Our defence isnt great but neither are most in this league. We have the players to dominate every game so our defence shouldn’t be under loads of pressure but we have a manager that lets us get dominated by how he sets up. 

On 16/09/2018 at 03:58, One For The Road said:

I disagree with all of this. You seem to think we are something we aren't.

"This squad will challenge for the playoffs regardless" Really? Based on what?? I think it will be miracle if we finish in the top 6. It just isn't going to happen. And you really are in dreamland when you start talking about finishing top 2.

I'd bet everything I own on us not being in within 15 points and 5 or 6 places of the top 2.

We have no defence and League 2 standard goalkeeper. Plus a manager that doesn't know how to get the best out of the squad, which isn't a great squad to start with.

Play offs? No chance.

We have the best attacking players in the league by a mile. Name another team with a £30m winger or a a CM worth that? Our players should be top 6 easily and with a good manager we’d piss this league. 

The playoffs distort the league. We should be aiming for top 2 and have the playoffs as a fall back. Last year it wasn’t all about finishing top 6 after our bad start and it’s looking to that way already. That’s nothing good enough. This squad will challenge for the playoffs regardless of who I supported  In charge. That’s not good enough. We need to win our next 3 to get back to top 2 form of 2 pts a game. That’s easily achievable with who we have. Will-we do it is another thing. 

56 minutes ago, Indigo said:

Steve Bruce's turgid Villa played Dean Smith's liquid football-playing Brentford only a couple of weeks ago and had 57% possession, surprised the Brentford fans aren't calling for his head at that rate...

Good point but Even in our best game in years( Bruce’s words not mine) we couldn’t beat them. Don’t even try to compare Bruce’s football with Smiths. We play good stuff occasionally Brentford are coached to do it all the time. Smith may not cut it here for multiple reasons but I’d rather give him the opportunity than watch more of Bruce’s crap. Dean Smith, Oscar Garcia are achievable. Brenda;n Rodgers would be the dream for me. I’d even sound out Dyche as Burnley have hit their ceiling. There’s loads of manager better than Bruce out there. Let’s get one. 

Tonight is now the bench mark for me. I’m one of bruces biggest critics regarding the style but even if we’d have lost I’d have praised him for that performance. If we follow that up on Saturday  we will win easily. 

43 minutes ago, Tommo_b said:

Scouting for who? 

Girls?

4 hours ago, jimcohen said:

Exactly, why we should play 4-4-2 with a proper CF there. We cross it loads, but sometimes, who too?

If we played higher up as a team then the CF wouldn’t have to run wide as much With Jack and McGinn 433 is best formation if played correct and as a 433 not a 451 

37 minutes ago, DaveAV1 said:

I agree all those players have improved during Bruce’s watch and I won’t claim that as a coincidence. It also must be said that a number of players came here and didn’t get anywhere near the level of performance that they achieved at their former clubs, Hogan being the most glaringly obvious. The truth is none of us really know what goes on at BMH, so we form our opinions on what we can see in matches and even then those opinions vary, sometimes quite considerably, despite us all watching the same match. 

For me it’s not necessarily about style. Of course like most people I’d love to see flowing and entertaining football, and of course no matter who the manager is, some games will be better than others. It’s more important that there is a game plan that works and I think Steve Bruce is torn between his own cautious, pragmatic style and wanting to play a more attacking style that he feels fans expect. Almost inevitably he falls between two stools and doesn’t quite achieve either and we usually look unconvincing, win, lose or draw  

It’s perhaps significant that he often says that this is the chance he’s waited 20 years for. I think other clubs he’s managed are less in the glaring spotlight and he’s been allowed to get on with it his way, I won’t say without pressure, but with considerably less than here. The only other club of any size he’s managed is Sunderland, where he faced similar criticism. Teams often reflect their manager and essentially  I think he’s not convinced deep down that he’s quite good enough and as such has produced a team that in turn, is not quite good enough. 

Adomah scored a lot last year but his overall performaces weren’t all that and he’s been crap since January really. Chester has been a good player for a long time and still is. As for Jack and Johnstone they are good young players who are developing and getting better with games. Who’d have guessed if you trust young players they get better. You can argue the affect Bruce has on individual players but as you say one thing you can’t  argue about is the stuff we see on the pitch. We are a well drilled side unfortunately the defensive mindset of the coaches overides any attacking intent. We have some cracking attacking players and Bruce seems to be trying to get more in but he’s has to gamble a bit more as I think then the rewards would be far greater and outweigh any risk of losing. Last year in critical games we dropped points by not going at teams from the start or in the case of Wembley lost out on promotion. Tonight is one of those nights We have to beat the Brentford’s at home if we want to go up. 

Bruce seems to be a very popular bloke and this is a big asset for the club to have but his teams are awful at playing football. If he wasn’t so pig headed I think he’d admit that the coaching set up isn’t working and if he’s doesn’t address it it’ll cost him his job. I’d sack Calderwood promote Agnew and get another young enthusiastic coach in to get our players moving. 

3 wins with 1 crap performance 1 bad performance and 1 I enjoyed but need to do a lot better (Wigan) performance. Ive accepted Bruce won’t get us playing like Brentford and it’ll be individual performances that’s win us most games but what’s im finding baffling is the way Bruce state should we must do better but doesn’t seem to be able to understand that’s his job. For an experienced manager to come out time and again and say it but he’s teams dont actually play any better is baffling. Last night I watched Whelan run away from our keeper every time he had the ball instead of looking to get it and start our play. He takes too long to do anything and we’d end up playing too slow and infront of a packed defence. That’s why we struggled until Jack came on. JDH should’ve played DM that’s his role mainly. I hope  Bruce’s can get in 3 ready made players so the team improves as he can’t do do that through coaching. We are lucky we have an easy start and until Brentford and Sheff Utd we won’t know if we are any good but regardless of Bruce if we keep Jack fit we will be involved. 

The Premier League squad lists should be interesting a few have very top heavy squads. Hopefully there’ll be some good picks girl us from them. 

9 minutes ago, Jareth said:

£40 mill fine to win at least £100mill for finishing last in prem - if I had the money I would chance it.

 

It says £17m fine paid over 10 years elsewhere. I’d take that. 

15 hours ago, snowychap said:

You'd spread the £40 million income over the 10 years to which it applied.

Why? You could easily buy the stadium for 10 years and have it cash upfront. There’s nothing stopping how you do the accounting. 

Offer him a new deal with a release clause next summer If we don’t go up. If we do he gets a bonus and payrise. That would unite all the fans in one go  

Unless Bruce’s changes I can’t see him being here by October. 532 doesn’t work work for us. Go back to 433 and drill the players in it. Stop trying to be clever playing full backs at CB. Get your own ideas. Pick energy over experience.  TRust the kids. 

On 19/07/2018 at 23:46, OutByEaster? said:

So, of the reported £40m we need to raise for FFP compliance, how much do we think we've already covered?

Wages for Johnstone, Samba, Snodgrass, Agbonlahor, Onomah, Terry, Tuanzebee, Grabban, Round and Wyness will mean we're operating at a very rough guess about £18m lighter than last year as things stand. I suspect with some of the other cost savings we've made, we're probably about half way there.

Of course, it might be that those savings have already been figured in and we're looking for £40m on top of that - in which case, we're even more fouled up than we thought. 

None of this will help our ongoing battle to pay the taxman or the other people we owe cash too, and that's our more pressing trouble, but I guess we're a little more sane at the moment than we were when got into this trouble - too little too late I suspect.

 

Lots of questions and no way of us knowing. How much of future income have we lent against? The £13m last parachute payment? I know we loaned against a few transfer fees but what about Gil and Gollini? That’s about £7m added to your savings and the parachute and we are nearly there. How much did Recon sponsor stadium for? How much is this new kit deal and sponsorship worth? That’s just things we’ve already done we dont know about. How much more sponsorship can we get in? These blokes don’t look like mugs so hopefully there’s a plan other than weakening our squad now. 

18 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

For those of you getting excited about the prospect of a takeover by middle-eastern 'rich Arabs', I refer you to the many sobering posts by our friends from Leeds Utd., earlier in this, and related, threads.

Crap owner are crap owners. Nationality is irrelevant. Let’s enjoy the prospect of having a good owner with big pockets for a bit as the reality as we know may be different. 

1 hour ago, bannedfromHandV said:

So we should play them because we can't get rid of them? 

Not to play them Involve them and use them if needed. We’ve had a bomb squad it seems for years. Alienating players doesn’t work. 

30 minutes ago, hooter said:

The reason HMRC drove us into admin way back when was they had the arse ache that football debts get preferential treatment over theirs.

But bates skittled them, and it never went to court.

Similar with Pompey I believe.

I don't know if HMRC ever got to make a challenge in court that their debt should rank alongside football debt.

You might like to ask your trust to find out.

This is the obvious problem if you go into admin. Bates engineered ours, so if he won it his friends in the BVI Krato and Astor "absolved" £37 mill of debt, if he lost admin they didn't.

So the word removed got the club back whilst screwing genuine creditors, up to and including St John's Ambulances

Where does your debt lie ?

All football debt survives admin, so Micah, Ross and the boys get paid regardless.

It seems much recent borrowing is against assets ? Well in an admin, the lenders would just take the assets and **** off as I understand it ?

There is "no bank debt" which might prove a little dispiriting, as unlike banks, very few shady lenders will have lent money to Xia unsecured.

So what debt exactly would you shed in  admin ?

Genuine question to those who understand it better, from one who saw admin mean an even bigger rinsing ?

 

Don’t think think it’s debt essentially. It’s  cash flow. We are running at a loss and Xia hasn’t the funds to keep going. 

3 hours ago, sir_gary_cahill said:

I saw him in an u23 game, can’t remember who it was against, he was impressive, why do you think u23 football is played at a pace of old man walking football? I love going to those games

I think he’s fee must’ve been buffering everytime I’ve seen our u23 play it’s been fast fluid football. I thought Tish looked good and was settling well until Bruce came in and then something happened. 

Just now, Tony said:

At this stage I’d be happily take being red bull villa 

Villa keeps me awake at night as it is 

9 hours ago, NurembergVillan said:

A couple of things on FFP (as covered elsewhere in the thread by someone - apols I can't remember who) are that firstly, you have to be realistic on pumping cash in by sponsoring stands etc.  Owners can't pay £20m a year to sponsor the North Stand when no other company would do that, and no other club in the league has anything near that.

Secondly, it doesn't work as simply as accounting.  It's not just X+Y-Z=FFP.  They amortise the player's transfer fee over a period of the contract, factor in any losses on sales, salaries, etc.  There's loads that goes into it.  It's a nonsense, but it is what it is.

To get £15m off the wage bill we've got sell 10 players on £30k per week.  Who's left?  And if they haven't put in a transfer request we've got to pay them a chunk of their remaining contract anyway, so the savings will be a lot less than the whole salary.

Both Round and Wyness said things were in place so FFP wouldn't be an issue this season.  If I go and knock on their office doors at VP tomorrow they won't be saying that

For stadiums sponsorship you’re looking at about 2/3m a year hence you do it over 10 years or something. Amortisation is where you need very clever accountants so you sell at the right time. We probably can’t afford one though! I’d be looking at anything and everything. I’d ask Richards to sign a new 5 year deal so his 60k a week drops to 12k for instance as he’ll never play again. We need to think outside the box to get money in to  the club but I fear we are solely focusing on survival and day to Day costs and not even looking to keep the squad intact to try to get up. Hopefully todays reports are true and the DR is on his way very soon. 

1 hour 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.

On FFP We have still got revenue streams untapped. For EG let’s pretend Xia or a new owners was loaded we’d could easily sign a lengthy stadium sponsorship deal and get the money upfront. Stand renaming etc are all possibilities. FFP was supposedly a £40m hold. So far we’ve lost £15m on wages from last year With our surplus players we could easily shift another £15m off the wage bill without touching the Crown Jewels or depleting the squad that much. We got about £7m in from Gollini and Gil and would probably get £10m in If we sold the likes of Jedinak Birkir Hogan and a few others so theoretically we could get up to £40m saved this year. Also FFP isn’t judged till March so we could gamble a bit till the Jan window and then sell if needed. It’s strange how a few weeks ago Round and that said things weren’t as bad as it seemed then in 2 weeks it’s a all gone tits up.