54 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

He is turrrrible

I'm a big fan, at Championship level with a little bit more time on the ball he would boss the division.

32 minutes ago, meme said:

How about Osman? Would bring much needed experience into the heart of the midfield.

Well past his best, not as nippy as he used to be which just means he is a tidy player who will fail to penetrate defences. I'd rather keep Gil and try develop Grealish/Green.

13 minutes ago, Butterfingers said:

Pre takeover, Pearson was my ideal candidate.

Post takeover, the idea of Moyes is growing by the hour.

I echo everything that Gary Thomas says, we could almost overnight change from being the sinking ship to avoid like the plague, to the stand out club in the division who all championship players would want to play for.

My only nagging doubt is Moyes failures in his last 2 posts, although following on from Ferguson was a thankless task.

I'd have the same reservations, a good start would be absolutely crucial for him.

If Moyes is manager then Gibson on a free transfer is a big possibility.

I'll admit I'm not as worried now, it is just as it does seem things are checking out. I still insist that Samuelson is scum who should not be allowed near a football club though.

In fairness the Teamax thing checks out

http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=281129116

Quote

Teamax Technologies Group offers research, development, and system integration services for software platforms in urban management, public security, and traffic and transportation sectors. The company is based in Hangzhou, China. As of April 7, 2016, Teamax Technologies Group operates as a subsidiary of Softto Co., Ltd.

12 minutes ago, VillaJ100 said:

Do you know I'd forgot all about that charlatan O'Leary, but how could I with classic soundbites such as "They're an honest bunch of lads" and "We've got a small squad"

If he was given the same resources as O'Neill he might have done better than him in my opinion. He talked some rubbish though.

Ryan Giggs might head into management if he does not want to stay on under Mourinho. It would be hugely risky but he could bring some decent young players on loan which would be nice if there turns out to be very little money available. From interviews he does not seem to have a great football mind but given his professionalism as a footballer he could be a good influence on the younger players.

Sleeping with the brothers wife is another negative but these things happen.

2 minutes ago, MessiWillSignForVilla said:

It's also been reported in many papers that Comoli was involved, and now he hasn't even been contacted by them...

Touché, but Comolli didn't have his jersey on the wall and doesn't have past links with Wyness. On the balance of probabilities it is almost certain that Samuelson is involved.

5 minutes ago, MessiWillSignForVilla said:

No it's not, it's a rumour that seems to stem from the fact there was a shirt that said Samuelson in that photo with Tony Xia in the locker room. He could be involved, but there's pretty much nothing to go on.

It has been reported in many papers that Samuelson advised Tony Xia on the deal.

The biggest worry I have is that Xia doesn't have great wealth, that an entity like the Vibrac Corporation have lent the cash to him and will swallow up the parachute payments and then proceed to asset strip the club when Xia doesn't have the cash to pay them back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrac_Corporation

Quote

Reading

Reading secured a £10m loan against the August 2014 parachute payment due after their relegation from the Premier League, this was secured after relegation.^[6] Upon receiving the £10m parachute payment Reading will owe Vibrac a remaining £1.5million. With Reading seemingly unable to make the remaining payment Vibrac called in BGT to oversee the sale of the club. Vibrac pushed through the sale of Adam Le Fondre to Cardiff and seemingly made things difficult for the chairman, Sir John Madejski, by changing terms of sale on several occasions. This led to many potential investors disengaging with the club, whilst Vibrac sought to push through sale to the mystery Phoenix consortium, which involves former Director, and person for bringing Vibrac into Reading, Chris Samuelson. This called the Football League to look into the inappropriate role that Vibrac have given themselves, of running the club without having undertaken the Fit and Proper Persons Test.^[7] Reading were subsequently fined £30,000 by The Football League in March 2015

Maybe I'm being overly pessimistic.

Just now, cyrusr said:

Having an exceptionally quick look at this, it appears to be more about whether they have criminal record, been barred from running a company etc. It has nothing to do with real financial intentions or where the money comes from.

From what seen and heard from the info that has been disclosed I think he is passing this with flying colours so those thinking he isn't fit and proper don't hold your breath.

When Samuelson picks out frontmen he doesn't pick ones that won't be considered credible. The parallels with Reading are shocking to be honest.

Mikey Drennan has taken a break from/ left professional football and Shamrock Rovers as he battles with depression. He plans to return home to Kilkenny to seek employment and go back playing Hurling.

He speaks of his lack of support at his time at Villa. http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/league-of-ireland/i-walked-out-of-dressing-room-and-started-crying-shamrock-rovers-star-opens-up-on-depression-battle-34731605.html

Quote

Drennan soon came to this realisation when he left the hurling hotbed of St Kieran's College in Kilkenny during Transition Year, aged 16, for greener pastures and the lure of the Premier League with Aston Villa.

It wasn't what he expected and, while he prospered on the pitch - he was second top scorer in the NextGen Series (Youths Champions League) when Villa won the competition in 2013 - he was capitulating off it.

"You went there (Villa) and there was no support - I used to go back and close the curtains and get into bed after training," the 22-year-old says.

"That was about 2.0 and the sun could be splitting the stones. You have way too much time to think. You need to keep yourself busy. If I had known that before I went over, I would have done a bit more college work and stuff for my education."

Instead, like so many before him he got sucked into gambling and the 'high' of the bookies. Being anonymous in a mass of punters was a temporary release from the 'low' he was experiencing the majority of the time.

"I was into gambling. That was a bad thing I was into - I was into all that stuff. You look for anything to pass time and the only thing you could do was go to the bookies and it's not a nice thing," he explains.

"You get such a high when you're down on such a low and it's not nice. Luckily enough I'm not like that any more. I'd have one or two bets but that's about it.

"Over there that's all you did. I used to go back, f**king watch telly for the whole day sitting in a black room.

"I didn't realise at the time what was actually going on. It messes your head up."

After leaving home in his teens, the talented striker suffered severe bouts of "homesickness" and regularly had to be dragged back to England. It was something that became the norm.

And even when he returned to Ireland to play with Shamrock Rovers, he thought his symptoms would improve, but he was only delaying the inevitable.

"I left when I was 16, I was really homesick and that, it wasn't nice but I'm not really sure what brought it on. There could be so many things that brought it on but it wasn't a nice place to be in," Drennan says.

"I used to hate it, I used to dread going back to England. One summer I was close to not going back.

"I don't really have any regrets about what I've done, but if I look back on it I probably would've done things a little differently if that makes sense.

I've said it already and I'll say it again that there is no reason for Samuelson to be involved if everything is above board.

I wonder if Bielsa is on the radar at all? He was close to going to Swansea last season and although Swansea were in a better situation at the time there is more potential to develop a serious project at Villa. He has his eccentricities but could lay down some serious foundations as to how the football team should be run. The football would be great to watch too and it would be a tremendous signal of intent.

Just now, Pilchard said:

Seems that way. A lot of people with negative thoughts on him - what's the deal there?

Links to moving shady Russian money into football particularly Reading in the past. His main business is in offshore banking and the setting up of shell companies I believe. Why he needs to be involved here is questionable. Wyness on the other hand is potentially a great appointment.

4 minutes ago, AshVilla said:

Chris Samuelson former Reading FC Director?

Very worrying if it is him.

He was completely unfit at the start of the season along with Veretout, whatever training Sherwood was doing at the time the fitness was atrocious. Along with the tactical disaster in the Leicester game the team ran out of legs completely that day. Of course Leicester benefited greatly from the cycling sport science geniuses at Centro Mapei in Italy which helped have them so fit.

10 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

Christopher Samuelson tried to get a couple of billionaires to buy Everton, I guess he links in with Wyness.

I hope he isn't involved

http://www.gudavadze.com/court.news.christopher-samuelson-denies-money-laundering-allegations.html

Quote

Chris Samuelson denies allegations of money-laundering

By Matt Scott
20 April 2012

The man fronting the Russian takeover at Reading has been accused in US court papers of being the subject of “multiple high-profile money-laundering investigations”, The Daily Telegraph can reveal.

It seems like this man is very smart, hopefully he see the sense in low ticket prices, big attendances, great atmosphere and a great stadium being an important part of rebuilding the club.

From my googling I can find very little business info about this lad but from Lerner's statement and the PHD thing it seems as he is something of an architect and a genius.

A young Harvard professor to give West Point Fixed minor

Xia Jian System: 25 years old, was born in Quzhou, Zhejiang Province. Harvard University Master of Business Information Management Architecture and Design Science Ph.D.
Bit, now the youngest professor at Harvard University, he served as executive vice president of the United States XWHO design consultancy, design and co-Ivy
Institutions (Harvard professor of more than 20 joint investment company) CEO. Research topics include digital urban landscape, GIS
And network GIS, Eastern and Western cultures and landscapes, and so on. He proposed "About dynamic landscape planning and design theory" is modern King
Concept planning new theoretical model design. He has participated in a number of cities of regulation presided Germany, Britain, Israel, Egypt and the United States
Project planning and design awards.

Sitting opposite me in the summer to build a unified vice precocious appearance, and no wunderkind frivolous. I do not know why, looking at him, brain
Yard suddenly emerge out of "Kingdoms" in the words: "Way back when the public would like, Joe married early, majestic high spirit, guam
Towel, laughing mast scull ashes ...... "Summer build system is just the wedding, however, is different from the public would like, he was very calm.

Hangzhou should be invited, only 25-year-old landscape design expert command of the summer to build more than 20 graduate students at Harvard University, will be used for two months a year
Time, West Lake in Hangzhou planning as a whole. This summer to build the system to reporters about some of his initial ideas.

Future city planning, in the strict sense is called "Landscape Architecture." This discipline in China is very fresh. According to the traditional thinking
Victoria understood that landscape architecture is talking about garden design, such as the Suzhou gardens, royal garden design. We are talking landscape provided
Meter, is a larger scale, such as the environment of the whole country, an urban environment, or in a city environment for the community
Comprehensive design.

Although the characteristics of each city is different, but the same basic steps of planning and design. Have accurate information, to grasp the pulse of a city development
Stroke foundation. The first step in Hangzhou landscape design is to collect data in various fields, and then create a dynamic model, provided by the Planner
A plurality of different programs, then those programs evaluated. How much would such a program percentage points of economic growth, but
A program of cultural history and would cause much damage to the ecological damage caused by the number and so on, this data will be in our program
Embodied so that policy-makers consider and weigh, which then decided to use the program.

This time I went with 20 people hang together, there are architects, urban designers, landscape architects, ecology, history, culture and other parties
Side professionals, because landscape planning needs of various disciplines who cooperate with each other to complete.

Hangzhou is impossible because the plan changed dramatically. The main purpose of the plan is to help the West declared "World Cultural Heritage
Production ", Hangzhou, but also because they simply can not be declared" World Heritage "and ignore the others. We'll give a few aspects of Hangzhou
A program that is doing so, the prospect of five years, 10 years later, will have what effect predictions. This design project is expected next year 3
Months to be completed.

Transformation of the West, we are eliminating some damage may Westlake facilities stuff, such as high-rise buildings; change some transport facilities,
Traffic management. Now there is an influence of the West Lake landscape of skyscrapers, if you set one-way street can cause such an effect,
That is if visitors back, you do not see the impact of landscape building, so you can avoid the demolition of buildings and losses. In addition, the plan
Set some tour scenery, such as rockery, attic for a class, to West Lake "modesty cover" to ensure that visitors do not see too unpleasant East
Western.

West now can not afford more tourists, we must consider the development of more tourist spots to evacuate tourists. According to regulation across the Qiantang River
Planning, the future focus of the Qiantang River in Hangzhou city would like to move there. Also, if you want to widen the road, the road extension how much money will
No damage to the landscape resources and even cause damage ...... ecological resources of these problems, we have to demonstrate.

Currently we have finished collecting all the data, the results more optimistic, from the data, the natural scenery in general no major break
Bad, not to the point of non-demolition of high-rise buildings. But this is only the first step in the declaration, the probative value of the landscape, in this regard, the West Lake has excellent
Potential. But the second step is more important, namely how to ensure that the landscape is not destroyed. There are many views of the world, because too much emphasis on creating
Making short-term economic benefits, so that the environment has been destroyed malignant. Such as the US Yellowstone Park actually made the railways, the large number of
After the tourists bring in, although in a significant increase in earnings in two years, but the damage to the landscape, no one went.

Urban planning is like home decorating design should put more money into the plan. Although the plan was to do a spend hundreds of thousands
Dollars, but since then the city can no longer indiscriminate demolition of unauthorized construction, can be described once. Hangzhou a few years ago to engage in major demolition and construction, to spend a billion dollars,
This can often be the construction of a pass, the next will have to be repeated. In fact, according to the computer demolition process can set the dynamic city mold
Type for virtual try. City any changes can be reflected in this model. For example, to build a building, how much money will be spent,
What is the impact on the overall construction of the city, the surrounding ecological destruction if there is, everything can be predicted, and so do not have to build only after
know.

Xia said that he built the system

Century 20 months, the mainspring of my life as if slips are heavy academic work and tightened. A regulation in the Middle East
Planning projects not yet completed, China Hangzhou West Lake scenic area planning began a tedious preparatory work. So I often late at night
Was awakened by phone, stumbled into the earth could react from which side of the sound, you have to quickly cut into thinking needs to be discussed
issue. So passively experience dislocation transfer time and space, almost equivalent to the years when the real feelings of traveling around the world
Dazed mood changes when empty.

Even worse, at the same time have to play a number of different roles across different stage back and forth, often it is easy to produce
Students a sense of confusion. At school, I was a rush to do doctoral thesis, an assistant professor of secondary instructors taught several letters
Head of information science and technology assisted planning project; in the company, is a designer exhausted, often a "dragon head, but
Vice president tail ", a shuttling negotiators from around the world; and in his spare time, you become immersed in their own piece of a
Scholarly world of writers, written in English their professional articles with Chinese painting poetry prose. So often I would be good friends
Friends of cross-examination, they are always surprised me is how to adapt to this "foot boat several" life.

A lot of people say I am a child prodigy, 5-year-old school, primary school jumped two, 15-year-old admitted to the University, 24-year-old scored a Ph.D. from Harvard.
To be honest, 14 years ago, I almost think so.

My parents are ordinary workers, there is no major problem. But my grandfather is the late Qing Dynasty lifts last generation, has appointed the director of Zhejiang Province.
Kid grandfather gave me an old old books, taught me back inside a few Tang poems, poems by heart, and I did as word of the book
According to the original word is written. I grew up with a grandmother, she likes stopping by, among older sisters, ages always have to ask, you big
How old, how old I was young, I listened until subtraction will forget the side. Then the other grandmother said, the child is too smart, should
The to school, so I'll go to school.

I've got a few years older than my brother, he learned books, I pick nothing to look at, and later I found a teacher, I
Have a chance to jump two, save a lot of time.

Since learning has been good, it would be "child prodigy" title sort of a bit smug, before the entrance all day with a bunch of students playing football.
College Entrance Examination Consignee "Department of Microelectronics, Tsinghua University," but also specially marked: the deployment of professional disobedience.

This year in our department where only recruit one person, my political does not test well, it came in second, because they do not obey the deployment of special
Industry, other professional Qinghua did not admit me. Later, Beijing Forestry University accepted me. I am very grateful that get the job, then
, I started to re-examine themselves, to realize the efforts and diligence is the real smart. If I'm smart, I think I'm smart
In an "Enlightenment" word.

I was lucky in the United States met my teacher Charles Harris. He is a famous architectural design master plan, and also my
Foster parent. Professional, he has been my guide is exhausting, life is meticulous concern for me. Every time I'm out
Poor, he will personally drove me to the airport and back, rain or shine he was always waiting at the airport waiting to pick me up. once,
The plane was delayed more than four hours, he was at the airport waiting for more than four hours, it was raining and I did not know the airport there
Old man has been hard waiting. I write every article he must carefully read and save a copy. In fact, many Chinese prose,
Essays, poetry, he can only read the middle occasional English word, but this did not affect his enthusiasm for reading. I am going out
Version of the anthology title page, I wrote: To my adoptive father Charles Harris.

Modern Landscape Design of four stages of development

1, as represented in Olmsted designed Central Park, the United States, so he extended landscape design from the traditional concept of personal services to
Service to society.

2, the 1940s was known as the Harvard Four Diamond four designers launched the modernist movement. Its greatest significance lies: from the city
Landscape, rural landscape, natural landscape need to address how the proposed 3 aspect more important and practical problems in terms of human.

3, is represented by the famous Dan Kelly, Jan Michael Hudson and summer to build the system's mentor Charles Harris. They regulate a large area
Plan, the first computer-aided planning, resulting in a geographic information system model.

4, animation multidimensional landscape planning. Yuka build system was first proposed in their papers. In 1998, Los Angeles, the first use of summer
Build dynamic programming system, to create a virtual model of a dynamic city. Here, everything can be in the form of animated demo, gives intuitive visual
Feel feelings. For example, a street of the city, there are 10 million vehicles by the effect would be like, how much pressure at this time ecological protection
Force, the road can withstand much pressure data will be reflected accordingly.

8 minutes ago, thabucks said:

I see Rodgers is being linked with WBA. Surely with new owners and with even being in the championship we are a bigger draw. He got Swansea promoted playing attractive attacking football. Did ok at Pool. And I believe he could get the best out of  out attacking talent. 

Who'd have thought pre Gerrard slipping that in 2 years time fans of a championship club would be considering Rodgers for manager.

8 hours ago, Genie said:

There's always a reason why its difficult to follow another car in F1. Rear spoilers, Aero, exhaust heat, tyres, dirty air...

If they sorted out the front wings it would help a huge amount. They should word the regulations in such a manner that only basic 2 piece wings like the example below are only permitted. The wider bodies and tyres will be welcome but the idiots are increasing the front wing size too which won't help.

.

I'd do away with DRS too, nothing as boring as DRS overtakes, I'd much rather see a driver struggle for 10 laps to make an overtake than cruise up behind and open their wings. Anyone remember the battle back in the day between Coulthard and Verstappen Snr at Austria where Coulthard couldn't get by in spite of being in a far quicker car, that was great racing.

6 minutes ago, villarocker said:

A loan move for Danny Ings maybe? He's a proven goalscorer at Championship level, would be eager to score and play well to impress his employers at Liverpool, they have a deluge of strikers ahead of him and, they probably would like to see him get games but not in the Premier League. 

Maybe a stumbling block over who pays what though? 

Worth trying anyway but I'd imagine there would be top tier clubs willing to take him on loan too. Wages might be problematic too. He is a far more complete player than Gayle anyway.