MrBlack

It was the easy way to minimise impact on the traffic. Keep fans at the stadium longer and spread out the departure times.

Disagree, there are more differences between ours and Chelsea than the two I mentioned.

They don't have a history to bang on about themselves. Former players is all they've got to talk about, precisely because none of those ex players really acheieved anything with them.

This would be the most shocking thing about the Rice transfer.

Queue amendment submitted. The release leaked above doesn't mention supplier changes, but I guess that might be incorporated in the detail behind it.

Thet better get those relegation wage drop clauses right. Presumably a lot of players had promotion wage increase clauses that Luton maybe never expected to get activated. That could be a big hit to their spending power to.

Presumably we'd still owe Nakamba a hefty chunk of his salary anyway as a loyalty bonus. He hasn't exactly requested a transfer. He's clearly not just in the game for the money, but he does use his money to help those less fortunate, and so he will still want to get as much as he can to help his foundation. Maybe we're trying to cover his loyalty payment plus a bit of FFP profit for us. and Luton, in meeting this, don't have enough left to give him the salary he wants. That is then on Nakamba and noone else. If we drop our asking price to forgo the loyalty payment, that money is then still going to come out of Luton purse in the form of a higher salary that Nakamba will want to make up for the lack of loyalty payment. Fundamentally, we aren't a charity, Luton are a PL club, and if they can't afford him we need to see who else can. If Nakamba only wants to go there (I doubt that's the case) he'll have to accept whatever they can afford.

Also the fact our lion is new (again)...we've had so many that we can't claim a particular lion as ours. You want one that you see, and you think, that is Aston Villa. The new iteration might be it, but it needs time to develop a reputation. Success whilst we have that lion will help, then it can become "the" villa lion. But whether it stays in a circle or not, and how we use it in different media will be the end goal.

A valid point, the revamped logo was fairly basic, and far less intricate and bold than their previous one. Probably worth noting that it came after two decades of under achievement for them, and coincided with them winning the league again. Succes on the pitch (or court in their case) brings joy off it.

Timberwolves and 76ers look like they belong to the same parent group. At least as much as we look like Chelsea at the moment.

Phenomenal. He's got the winning mentality. Whatever his goalkeeping weaknesses (and I can't really think of any at the moment since he improved his distribution), they are more than made up for by the confidence he inspires in the team. And if you want to win a cup, there isn't a better keeper in the world to help you do that.

This, with the lion from the gaslight badge, could be lovely. It's just so uniquely "us".

Thanks. As well as swapping the colours over, I made the claret more "claret", as they were still too purple in my view. If anyone has actual code for our real claret colour I'll tweak around with them a bit more.

Yeah I thought the same, especially on the gaslight one. But I think a gold lion looks better than a claret one, especially so on our primary shirt colour, and it's just the fact it was washed out by a blue background that made it bad before.

For reference, I think the ones we ended up with lacked vibrancy and definition. Especially on a claret shirt. I think swapping some colours over would have made them both better....

Given the cryptic phrasing that accompanied our new kit release and the mod warnings from the 2022 crest thread, let's discuss what we think Heck's planning to do with our badge Hopefully we get a few more insights in the coming weeks but until we do... The quote from the release: This suggests to me there is some concern within the villa camp that the new badge isn't right for our future. Combine this with the fact Heck has given a talk on how the 76ers badge was formed, and the role he played in it, and it looks like we'll get something new for next season. This is the logo "range" the 76ers use: I think we'll get a similar style badge that has modular components that allows us to use various parts for various purposes. I'm envisaging a crest + lion that will be our primary. This could well be the current circular badge with some slight modifications to make it stand out a bit more. The lion ends up being the partial primary that we use on the kit. And I can see a recreation of the Villa Villan for our secondary. What do you think we'll get and what do you want to see?

I'd be disappointed it we left our home. Villa Park is still one is the best stadiums in the country, and one of very few that actually look good. Surely we can retrofit a modern interior, with expansion to the outside to accommodate a capacity that future proofs us and a service that matches our ambitions. There's loads of land behind the north stand to use for multi use purposes, as shown by the villa Live design, which still left a fair bit of space free. It would be easier and cheaper to buy a row of houses next to villa Park at the moment, than to find a new site that itself would need us to buy up even more properties and businesses to even get started. This is the only way to expand beyond 50k... but it's cheaper than binning it off and we won't end up with a soulless identikit bowl.

I now know why I've only heard of one of their songs....

Wouldn't be the first time a club have bought everything except what they really need. Wouldn't even be the first time United have done it.

They're screwed without Kane. With him they're bankrupt. Son already dropped off this year and I expect he'll hit the cliff next season. Maddison and Richarlison are a mid-table forward lineup. They're going backwards and will be a few years before they're back near the top. I'd love it if they don't sell Kane now. Turning down 70m for him is madness.

My concerns with signing a quality player in a position we're already strong in are to do with the fact we have FFP spending limits. That money then can't be spent in a position where we need a quality player more. I'd rather we spent 100m on a second striker and got that right, than 40m on Torres and 60m on a second striker that isn't our first choice. Obviously, money only goes so far to persuading a player to join. Maybe we've exhausted the really expensive first choices for those positions, and rather than over spend on a second choice we're striking while the irons hot on another player we see as the future of our defence. But part of my little concern is we revisit the second striker options later in the window to see what's evolved and if it transpires our first target now wants to come to us, but we can no longer afford them.... have we then hampered our season. Overall though, I trust Emery, and only have to look at what happened with Moreno to see that signing someone i didnt think we needed is probably more to do with me being wrong than Emery making the wrong call.

I agree. Looking back at it I still feel it needs some work, maybe more gold, maybe a slightly better shape, but it's in the right frame of being unique, but also not crazy, and actually meaning something to us. The lion was bigger and more detailed. That lion can then be used in isolation where we want to simplify the logo, maybe even on the shirt itself. Keep the full logo for other purposes, but as a shape that represents our foundation, it will never age. Feel like we're in a (still fairly sizable) minority on this though.

The sponsor is huge but I'd take a legitimate business like that over ours any day. Maybe if we get Europa League next season we can hope for a blue chip sponsor, but sadly they're out of our league at the moment, unless we are happy to take a massive drop in our sponsorship funding. As for the shirt, hard to go wrong with red and black, but I do wonder whats with all the random patterns appearing more than ever this season. They all just feel so arbitrary

This^ Mings should never have lost it in the first place, but now that he has, and they're both performing out their skin with their respective roles, I see zero reason to change it again. Giving mings the club captain role will be a good way to wrap the mistakes of the past up for good

I'm sure as a child they were banned from playing in uefa tournaments due to their decision to not play in their home nation's league. But then I recall Swansea played in Europe so guess if that ever was the case, uefa found a way to bend their rules to suit.