dukes

But by driving revenue down by not investing, finishing lower and getting less prize money once the wage bill has been cut where on earth is this money going to come from to challenge top 6? He needs about £50m to do that. Revenue stream has reduced significantly and the drop in wages will cover that reduction I would imagine so therefore no money left to invest. If he has it why has he stopped now? It doesn't make sense to me what he is doing. As the wage bill drops, and maybe some of the deadwood (Beye, Heskey etc) is replaced by players from the Youth Set up (if you don't play them you never know how good they could be), that frees up some cash to compliment the squad with some clever buys. Whether McLeish is the right person to make those clever buys is a different argument, but our owner seems to think so, so it's irrelevant. I would never have expected Alan Pardew to have been able to make clever buys in the way that he has at Newcastle, but i suspect they are the model we're now following. Revenue is probably not dropping at all. As fans it's easy for us to overestimate the importance of gate receipts to a club, but over a season gates 10,000 a game lower only really make around £4M difference. In the past year we've signed our best ever Sponsorship deal, and now our best ever kit deal, so there's no real evidence that says revenue is falling. Actually, the important figure will not be revenue, more likely it will be expenditure, and as long as the gap between the two gets wider it doesn't matter if revenue drops. He has other options re investment, but i guess until things are under better control he is only putting in what he absolutely needs to, and having seen £100M wasted, I don't blame him.

And that's a fact is it ?

Disagreeing with those that are relentlessly slating McLeish does not necessarily make you pro-McLeish. For myself, I have an understanding of our financial position, and understand that McLeish is our owners choice. I am pro Aston Villa, and that means I give my support o the manager.

Why is everyone who doesn't agree with you either a "McLeish Apologist" or "Stupid" ? I thought the site had rules about respecting other posters ? I didn't specifically call anyone on here directly a McLeish apologist or stupid. (aprt from that crap journalist who wrote that whimsical article about how great McLeish is) But im sure you know who you are if feel upset by such language. It doesn't need to be aimed at an individual, you seem to disrespect en masse. Surely that's worse ? In any case, I don't buy your anti-football argument, we played a similar style under MON, and i guess you were happy enough with that. McLeish deserves a lot of criticism for some of what he's done, but I think he deserves the right to put things right, to rid the squad of the bad eggs that clearly exist and to re-build with whatever resources are made available. There were not exactly lots of outstanding candidates for the job at the time he took, and i doubt there would be if the job became available again this year. I'm of the opinion that we have played as much good football this season as we have bad, unfortunately we haven't had as many good results as we have bad.

If we plan to spend again firstly why appoint Mcleish? And if we were going to spend again why did only Mcleish want the job? We will spend enough to survive, I see nothing to suggest Lerner plans on getting us challenging the top 6 anytime soon. It was clear that we would not spend this season, so maybe that was enough to turn some mangers off. If Randy decided to trust in McLeish why not appoint him ? Were you at his interview ? There is no evidence that says the club has changed it's medium/longterm goals, we could be just getting things under control again before spending the necessary money to get s into the top 6 again. You don't know, neither do I.

Why is everyone who doesn't agree with you either a "McLeish Apologist" or "Stupid" ? I thought the site had rules about respecting other posters ?

I corrected that for you. We of all people should know that Nike let us down in terms of quality of shirts and service.

per season? i guess if it is per season it will bring in sllightly more than the revenue generated by the money sponsors would pay for a premium brand next to their logo. Why do you continue with this ? You have absolutely no proof of any correlation between sponsorship and kit supplier. What you're suggesting makes no sense at all. You seem to be suggesting that the kit maker is more important than the team with which any sponsor is negotiating. As an individual I'm sure you prefer to be seen in Nike gear than Macron, actual I do too, but as a sponsor things such as Club history, Club ethics, Club stature far outweigh the desire ti bask in the glory of the Nike Tick. Answer me this, how does Genting benefit from having their logo next to Nikes ? Do you think it was really an important factor in their decision ?

well lets look at distribution, who has the biggest distribution network? who is the largest sports merchendise company in the world? which sports merchendise company has the best sales in the world? are any of the answers nike? are any of those answers macron? if you have any facts and figures which disagree with my thoughts that going with a company which is most likely outsold by style by jeremy kyle..lonsdale, will generate more income, or will out sell nike, or the extra clothing range will outsell nikes? please let me know. i am going on common sense, the worlds biggest sports brand who can launch a product in all the major cities across the world and have aston villa shirts on the wall in new york, tokyo, sydney and other rather big places, is clearly going shift more merchendise than a company whose biggest orders in this country are from none league clubs and only other large club is one in the same country they Are from. Ok, and how much good has any of that actually done us ? For all the marketing power, and brand recognition, have Nike kits significantly outsold the kits of Hummel or Diadora ? I would guess not. Do we know the value of the current Nike deal ? I expect financially the Macron deal is better, and let's say it's better by £1M a season, you would need to sell a lot of shirts in Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York etc to make up for tat. I'm not excited by Macron, but what I will say is this, two years ago I did not see any teams in Macron kits, suddenly I see a lot of teams In them, and clearly they are delighted to have Aston Villa for next season, as they've put us first on their list of English clubs. The Nike deal was never going to be lucrative, as far as I'm aware Bob Kain called in a favour to even get them interested, with Macron its likely we will be a priority, and that must be a good thing. If we had to go for a smaller brand, I'd have preferred us to have had a kit by Lotto, but I'm certain the club have goe with who they felt was best (in all aspects). i think your missing the point. if you are a company wanting to sponsor aston villa and know nike are the brand next to your name, you are going to have the worlds best,on a logo, next to your brand. you attract maximum revenue through sponsorship and that is just on the shirt. you have some small time manufacturers with no track record of success and no involvement with success and not a top brand, as an advertiser are you going to pay the same amount of money to have your brand next to macron? i would guess not. nike easily made the best aston villa 'casual' range, tops i normally wouldnt be seen dead in, but the nike designs were simple classic designs with a small villa branding on most, so the mrs wouldnt complain if i was out in one while we went shopping or moan our son was wearing football stuff all the time. so aston villa the brand was being promoted on smart casual polo shirts and the like. other kids see the top and then see a footy team on there and want one. i had 6 or 7 kids at my sons party the other year asking where i got the tops from because they all wanted one. well potentially that is 6 or 7 new fans from the devon area. so it is not as black and white as shirt - £25 profit it is the bigger picture that needs to be appreciated, the vaule of the club name, the extra revenue it will lose by changing shirts. im suprised people think macron will give a flying **** about aston villa and treat them as though they are the lord and master, they will see it as an average premier league club cutting costs and going for their cheap ass shirts. when merchendise is significantly lower than under nike, mecron will treat us as Nike have, not as a priority. under the worlds biggest and best sports brand name we were small fry reaping the benefits of the association with NIke there are no benefits of being associated with macron. if we were rolling in money then i wouldnt care less as funds would not be an issue, however it has been mentioned several times by the club that funds ARE an issue. so why do something which clearly will reduce our funds significantly, with merchendise ( which i believe is not a huge part of it) or most importantly potential for advertising and club associations with successful business. nothing villa related and **** all to do with macron and so on but mat letissier who was one of the best forwards not to play for a big club, turned down a move to spurzz due to the clingy material as it would make him look as fat as he was. he wanted to move but all down to the kit they had, wouldnt move there. as i say nothing villa or macron related but it is kit related. I think you're missing the point. A turd dressed from head to toe in Armani is still a turd. Its highly unlirly that Companies wanting an association with Aston Villa will care who the kit is made by, unless there is some brand synergy between them and Nike. Would Genting really care ? Our association with Nike has done nothing for us, I expect it suits both parties to go their separate ways. For Macron, we will indeed be a very big fish. For Nike who have Man Utd, Barcelona, Brazil etc we would never be of an importance, as proven by the delays and quality issues. If the deal with Macron is worth more per season than th. one Nike begrudgingly signed, its highly unlikely that our income from merchandise will reduce. You don't know what Macron will come up with regarding casual wear, but in my opinion the retro Hummel gear was better than the Man Utd copies Nike gave us.

well lets look at distribution, who has the biggest distribution network? who is the largest sports merchendise company in the world? which sports merchendise company has the best sales in the world? are any of the answers nike? are any of those answers macron? if you have any facts and figures which disagree with my thoughts that going with a company which is most likely outsold by style by jeremy kyle..lonsdale, will generate more income, or will out sell nike, or the extra clothing range will outsell nikes? please let me know. i am going on common sense, the worlds biggest sports brand who can launch a product in all the major cities across the world and have aston villa shirts on the wall in new york, tokyo, sydney and other rather big places, is clearly going shift more merchendise than a company whose biggest orders in this country are from none league clubs and only other large club is one in the same country they Are from. Ok, and how much good has any of that actually done us ? For all the marketing power, and brand recognition, have Nike kits significantly outsold the kits of Hummel or Diadora ? I would guess not. Do we know the value of the current Nike deal ? I expect financially the Macron deal is better, and let's say it's better by £1M a season, you would need to sell a lot of shirts in Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York etc to make up for tat. I'm not excited by Macron, but what I will say is this, two years ago I did not see any teams in Macron kits, suddenly I see a lot of teams In them, and clearly they are delighted to have Aston Villa for next season, as they've put us first on their list of English clubs. The Nike deal was never going to be lucrative, as far as I'm aware Bob Kain called in a favour to even get them interested, with Macron its likely we will be a priority, and that must be a good thing. If we had to go for a smaller brand, I'd have preferred us to have had a kit by Lotto, but I'm certain the club have goe with who they felt was best (in all aspects).

Hmm really ?? What about judging them on their English success ? I think it's one trophy each, they both took unfancied teams to league cup glory. Praise MON all that you want, but at least recognize tat there are parallels between his and McLeish's records. Oh, and by the way you're being silly and utterly stupid if you don't agree with me

What was boring about the football played on Wednesday ? People will always see what they want to see, but under McLeish, Villa haven't played any more long ball football than they did under MON, or even Houllier. When you have players of limited football ability you play football of limited quality, and that will of course result in players not being able to string a few passes together or launching the ball forward at every given opportunity. You're really stopping to Blues level when you compare them with us. Quite simply there is no comparison, at Blues Mcleish's remit was survival, here it's at worst Mid Table, i suggest at Blues he cut his cloth to suit. I'm not saying he's without his faults, he would not have been my choice of manager, but some fans will always tar him with this 'boring football' or 'long ball' tag no matter what.

Agree 100% Our team is summed up by Stephen Ireland, like him they need to have belief. It remains to be seen if McLeish is capable of giving that to them, but as fans we also need to drop the hatred of McLeish and remember we support Aston Villa, not the manager, and not the succession of players we've adored only for them to leave for greener pastures.

Yes, the signings of Milner and Young were great, but at the time they were players tat had already received rave reviews in the media. Downing probably had his best season last year after MON had left. How many sub £5M signings did MON make that set the world alight L how many signings did he make from the lower leagues ? Where were we when Spurs signed Naughton and Walker from Sheffield United ? Apart from the new Zidane, how many chances did he actually take in the transfer market ? How many of his signings have left Villa Park for a profit ? Who spent £9.5M on Curtis Davies and then sold Cahill for £5M. For the record I'm not blaming MON for everything, randy should have taken action earlier, but perhaps the smell of success, the close proximity of success made him hold back. It's lunacy not to recognize that MON's his transfer policy has contributed massively to our problems, and hamstrung the managers since. Who knows, if he hadn't wated so much on substandard aging players, or on players he was never going to play, then maybe we'd not have ended up requiring a bargain basement manager. Even with all the money MON spent everyone seems to agree the lot all under him was shit....worse still the purist football loving Villa fans seem to have been happy with it.

Would you agree the football is worse now than under MON and would you agree that attendances have dropped about 5,000 as a direct result? I would agree that the football is worse now than under MON, I don't agree that's all down to McLeish (he didn't choose to sell Downing or Young, im sure like most of us he thought N'zogbia would be a good replacement for Young). I do agree that attendances are down, some of that is own to McLeish, some is down to the economy. Attendances are down throughout the leagues. The football was better under Houllier, but attendances were dropping then too, and an awful lot of Villa fans never accepted him as manager either. If fans got behind the team and manager this might pass onto the players, but in my opinion the lethargy on the pitch is partially as a result if the silence inside Villa Park. It's chicken and egg I guess.

To my mind the football is the same as under MON, we just don't have Ashley Young as an outlet otherwise it's always been shit, and I agree most of our team are limited as footballers, and most of them were bought by MON for big money provided by Lerner. If you buy limited footballers who just want to hoof the ball, no amount of coaching will turn them into ball playing Brazilians.

No way MON would accept being told what he can spend and how much to pay them. Unfortunately Randy trusted him too much. This old myth I don't think you can call those signings a myth, they definitely happened. Of course we all wish they hadn't. You can't just sweep them under the carpet, and ignore the fact that they contributed both to MON's departure and our current position. If MON had put a decent European Scouting network in place, or listened to the scouts he had, we might have unearthed some decent European talent rather than paying over the odds (in both wages and transfer fees) for experienced premier league players. Lerner must shoulder a large portion of the blame for not tackling MON earlier, but MON must also share the blame for some very poor transfer dealings, and for what appears to be tantrum throwing when he was asked to address the situation.

Playing his best football sinc arriving here, and justified his MOM award.

He's te best we have in that position, but his crossing quality fluctuates between very poor and excellent. I guess that's the nature of winers though.

He successfully argued 'constructive dismissal' therefore the agreed terms in which he operated were changed forcing him out - clearly that was an expensive change , but any more expensive than keeping him? Probably as we can see how far we have dropped since when he would have wanted to 'push on' We don't know how MON argued the constructive dismissal case, but it seems quite likely it was either due to a change in employment conditions (maybe the removal of some of his control such as players contract negotiations), or if Faulkner and MON had history, then it's also possible he argued that in promoting Faulkner to CEO Randy had made it impossible for him to continue. It doesn't necessarily make Faulkner responsible. what is faulkners job and can you tell me what he is responsible for? Faulkner as CEO is charged with delivering on the KPI's set by th shareholders (Randy). My point has been that as those KPI's aren't published, none of us know what his responsibilities are, and he.nce we can't judge his performance.

He successfully argued 'constructive dismissal' therefore the agreed terms in which he operated were changed forcing him out - clearly that was an expensive change , but any more expensive than keeping him? Probably as we can see how far we have dropped since when he would have wanted to 'push on' We don't know how MON argued the constructive dismissal case, but it seems quite likely it was either due to a change in employment conditions (maybe the removal of some of his control such as players contract negotiations), or if Faulkner and MON had history, then it's also possible he argued that in promoting Faulkner to CEO Randy had made it impossible for him to continue. It doesn't necessarily make Faulkner responsible.

1. So MON deciding he could either not work within the new financial constraints, or work with Faulkner as CEO is Faulkner's fault ? 2. KMAC was not forced to take the caretaker manager role, he chose to. At the time a lot of senior players were very vocal about wanting KMAC full time. He tried the job, neither liked it or turned out to be very good, and went back to his old role, bearing in mind the boards plan to bring through the youth players, it was a natural thing to give KMAC a few games. What exactly did Faulkner do wrong ? 3. When MON left, Milner was practically a City player, do we know that MON didn't want Ireland ? Even if not, at the time he seemed like a decent player for us, and similar to N'Zogbia this season most fans were happy with the deal....hindsight is a marvellous thing, but I don't see what Faulkner has done wrong here either. 4. When GH was appointed, it's acknowledged we had a bunch of senior players who were lazy trainers (Collins and Dunne to name two), at the same time Petrov was dead on his feet after 60 minutes of each game, John Terry famously stated in the media following the FA Cup Semi that they knew we'd get tired in the last third of the match. Under MON we'd become predictable and unfit. GH changed too much too quickly, but most players looked fitter at the end of the season.....I'd say we've gone the other way again now, and players like Dunne, and Petrov look knackered after 60 mins once again. The players Ego's are not Faulkner's responsibility, this was a reaction to too many changes form the relatively easy life under MON. 5. No matter how many doctors looked at GH, he has stated himself many times since that he will never again be fit enough to manage. Following the mess of 2010/2011, and GH's scare at Villa, the previous one at Liverpool, and since his wife didn't want him to return to management in the first place, Randy/Faulkner simply could not afford to have a repeat of the same mess this season. If the doctor said he was not medically fit enough to continue in the role of manager, then I'm sure Villa had Key Personnel Insurance in place, and that will have paid GH his contract money. 6. Money spent on Managers since 2006 is wages plus approx. £8M in compensation and legal fees, but as I said I'm sure retirement for ill health will have been covered by insurance, so lets say £6M over 6 years. I'd say Faulkner got one Manager decision wrong (unless there's a dramatic change of fortune), MON walked, or claimed he was forced out by the appointment of Faulkner, whatever it was that's not Faulkner's fault. GH I believe would have given us a good blend of French and English players, and I think he'd have re-established us as a top six team. So the one that i think is a mess up is AMC. I agree this appointment and the process looks like a massive screw up, but maybe because of the negative press during the last season, decent managers were not exactly falling over themselves to come to us. 7. Unfortunately selling Aston Villa to a load of viewers in USA/China/India etc is like serving Gordon Ramsay a shit sandwich instead of a steak. Outside of the UK we're hardly known, deals like the Genting might help us crack Asia....you have to give credit to Faulkner for that. Actually, i think a fair portion of the blame here should go to a succession of managers who have preferred to over pay for ageing British based players rather than look for young talent abroad, signing players from abroad makes fans in that country curious, you can't convert them all, but you would convert some. Entering tournaments like the Barclays thing in Hong Kong will also help, I agree we need to do more, but also accept that without competing at the very top we'll never become a global brand as you put it. 8. Yes, everything has gone down since MON left, or since Faulkner was appointed, but we're in a recession, and in the end we truly messed up between 2006 and 2010, those were the shit or bust years. Randy does not have the money to compete with City, Utd, Chelsea etc etc, and we don;t have the global appeal that Liverpool have, or the London bias of Tottenham, so if we're ever to be successful again, then maybe we have to make our own way. Newcastle are doing well this season, they too had a succession of poor managerial appointments, and wasted a lot of money, i'm not saying they'll keep it up, but so far one of their most unpopular appointments is turning things around, getting the fans back on side, and operating within the financial constraints of the chairman. In the long term it's often the unpopular decisions that turn out for the best. 9. I agree letting contracts run down does not require skill, but as players salaries are the biggest portion of our losses it's the most obvious way to reduce them. Apart from Reo Coker, i haven't been sad to lose any of the players whose contracts have run down, and his agent talked him out of a new contract by being greedy, so in the end not being held to ransom by a player was a good decision by Faulkner. I'm not saying Faulkner is a great CEO, I'm certainly not saying he's got everything right, but I think we won't know how well he;s done, or what Randy's intentions are until the current raft of cost cutting through natural wastage of contracts is complete, and the Wage to Turnover ratio is improved. In a recession like we're having, and by playing a team made up of a lot of young British players, we have very little chance of attracting Wing Ya Mao and his friends, so increasing Turnover without massive success on the pitch becomes extremely difficult. Being honest Faulkner will do well to have only reduced turnover by 10%. These are very difficult times indeed.

What you describe as the decline of th club could just be steadying the ship to prevent the decline of the club. I have said this before, but unless you are aware of the personal objectives / KPI's set for Faulkner by Randy then you have no idea how he's performing. You don't know his remit, therefore I don't understand how you can say he's the problem.you're entitled to an opinion on what a CEO should do, but ultimately the CEO is charged only with satisfying the shareholders ....in this case Randy. I'm certain if Randy wasn't happy that progress was being made he'd ave moved Faulkner on.

If we absolutely have to change kit supplier, I'dersonall hope for Lotto or Puma. I think Lotto do some decent retro gear.

Does anybody actually know what specific KPI's Paul Faulkner has been given ? Those that don't are not in a position to judge him, but if he wasn't performing his tasks and meeting the objectives laid out by Randy Lerner, he'd be gone, of that I'm certain.