Teale's 'tache

25 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

I could literally make a Twitter account now called VillaBeaconofTruth and corroborate and share all these allegations as well.

Things are more " true " and beyond reasonable doubt when people want it to be.

In reverse, if this was a well liked figure at the club ( and the allegations were true ) you'd see a different level of skepticism and calls for people to wait for facts etc 

Indeed this new tweet, from another brand new account is just more accusations, with no verifiable proof of anything.

I'm trying to look into shirt sales figures to try and corroborate it, but their estimate of our shirt sales this season is 55k less than any figure I've found so far. Also, they say we are in a £50m FFP black hole. That's news to me. How'd that happen without anyone who tracks our accounts noticing?

Again I'm not saying none of this is true, but there are some very wild and odd accusations being slung around without any kind of verification, we're only hearing one side of the story from somebody who's clearly very angry and likely over-exaggerating to push their narrative.

Chris Heck may well be an absolute douchenozzle, in fact he probably is, but has he really done all of these things he's being accused of? The burden of proof is on the accuser at the moment and they've not produced anything verifiable just yet.

If Ty Bracey is saying they have heard from people in the club that something is up then there may be something in it possibly, hopefully the real truth will come out eventually.

5 minutes ago, villa89 said:

Is there any evidence to support this point of view though? So why fabricate a scenario that has no basis or inside knowledge when we have evidence and second hand reports of insider knowledge already that show clearly Heck is poison. We also have reports from his previous club of exactly the same thing. 

No offence, but it is usually best to try and see both sides of any story before making a judgment. As many have said, that tweet could just be a disgruntled employee using previous accusations and current issues to further their agenda, there's no clear evidence of anything in there, just a lot of very serious accusations.

I'm not saying it isn't true, it hasn't been disproven either, just that we should keep an open mind. There may be no actual evidence that makes it into the public domain, but if Heck and others leave in the next month or so then you'd have to think maybe some of what has come to light was true. 

I know we are on the internet where critical thought goes to die, and snap judgments are the norm, but I'd like to think we can at least be reasonable, hear both sides of the story and wait for some substantial evidence before breaking out the pitchforks.

Hmmmm... some very strong accusations there, and if it turns out to be true then things are about to get quite messy. It's a big if though, Twitter really is nothing more than a cesspit of bots, trolls and clout chasers nowadays.

Tom Collomosse from the Mail is following the account now (he covers Midlands sport) so it will be interesting to see if he produces anything on it. I dislike the Mail but Tom is almost bearable which is the highest compliment anyone from that rag will get from me.

The club has been very silent with regards to off-the-pitch things recently so I'd be surprised if there's any statement regarding it.

If Heck does go then it's going be interesting to see what the next man does, in theory some easy wins to get the fans on board with regards to the crest and North Stand if they can convince the owners to go back down those routes.

If this all turns out to be true what kind of a state are we going to be in entering our 150 year? Might go rupture my ACL to really feel part of it...

1 minute ago, DJBOB said:

Got that dead eye stare of all the good maniacal keepers.

Think he blinks like twice during the entire interview, it's quite alarming!

9 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

If it is to be Tim (and there aren't many options) then it'll a huge test for the boy - I hope he does well.

I think it will be Tim or move McGinn back, those seem to cause the least upheaval.

Sometimes an injury can give an opportunity that sparks a career, if it is to be Tim I hope he grasps the opportunity and makes a name for himself.

Disappointing result, but an encouraging performance.

As my dear mother used to say... "If you don't finish your dinner you don't get any pudding"

Just now, TRO said:

That was one or two games, it wasn't a major issue, because very few teams do that.

I accept the emboldened bit, but that is one of the factors, I consider to be an issue.

Losing 4 first team defenders, is not ideal, but Mings has been missing all season, Pau is more noted for his progressive passes, and Konsa has only just become injured, he played against Newcastle, which showed similar deficiencies.

I am not blaming Unai's tactics.....but if you are telling me we can afford, to ignore the oppositions actions, buy not stopping their intiatives, Then we are in for a big shock, mark my words.

I don't think we ignore the opponents' tactics, but notably during this run we have less 'control' as Emery calls it, we aren't keeping the ball as well, we are losing the ball in poor situations, which causes the ideal transition for the opposition to hurt us, and right now hurting us they are. Our possession stats are less dominant recently, and the more an opponent has the ball the more scope they have to attack you.

Why we have less control is probably down to a few things, but losing Torres is an obvious one.

1 minute ago, TRO said:

That is spot on....but that is not really the issue here.

Its the gap between our best form and our worst form, that forms the basis for concern.....Its the huge drops in performance, that has us all running for the Valium.

Parts of our game, in the bad games, is shocking....and its not to be expected from a team in our position....so I think that (respectfully) is a bit of a red herring...as are some of the other excuses, like fitness, when they have just had a month off.

 

I am not aiming blame at anyone, because I think many factors are contributing to one big one....."we can't stop opponents , when they are on a gallop"....too many times, the long ball kicker, does so with impunity....that has to be addressed.

 

 

 

I think there are numerous factors at play here, and there have been many high-scoring defeats this season of very good teams, we aren't alone in this.

It seems when we, Newcastle, Spurs, Brighton etc. lose, it's often a big loss. When it goes wrong it really goes wrong for all of us, and that's because we all play high-risk tactics. We have to take more risks to compete with those above us.

I think there's also a confidence issue, some mental fatigue could be playing a part, obviously missing big players for any amount of time will cause issues. The inexperience of being in this position may well be contributing as well (for the players, not Emery). Teams have changed how they play against us and we have to adapt to that. Notably, we seem to be catching less offside, not unexpected with the constant change of personnel at the back, but it also teams are a bit wiser to the pitfalls now.

I also think Emery has got a few things wrong recently, and he's admitted as much himself, maybe a bit of overthinking has been going on. We seem to be quite selective in the opponents we deem worthwhile to press further up the pitch, it's all risk-reward, but get it wrong and you can look a bit silly.

I'm not overly concerned, getting Torres back will be a big boost, as will getting Konsa back, and Diaby seems like he might be on the cusp of getting back to some form too.

Adapting to the current circumstances is a lot easier when you have your better players available. I also think Emery will settle down a bit once this blip is over.

6 minutes ago, Captain_Townsend said:

@Teale's 'tache I know we aren't on the perfect site. I want to acknowledge that. But we do have literally acres of land behind our smallest stand. And, on the transport issue, there are moves afoot to improve Witton Station - announced the same week we delayed the new development. And the whole point about the new development was that you would stagger the flow of people to and from the ground by offering pre and post match offerings to either get people to the ground earlier and/or hang around for a bit after.

And, as I said, we did buy up a row of houses 30 years ago so I am sure, at some level, it has been on the radar ever since then for us do so so again. And to be clear I am sure we would do so in an ethical way compares to the example given from Liverpool

I don't see a better alternative jumping out at me.

I don't disagree with what you are saying necessarily, it's all possible, just not easy and there are never any guarantees.

Hopefully, Witton Station changes will make a difference, but that alone won't likely be enough, there needs to be improvements to the service on matchdays to convince more to take the train rather than drive which will help to free up the traffic side of things. More trains, with more carriages. I don't know much about the bus services around the ground, but if we can improve the traffic in the area there'd be scope for more buses/taxis around the ground.

Buying a row of houses was easier and a damn site cheaper 30 years ago, rules and laws change. I'd hope we take the most ethical route, though that could add years to starting any development depending on the issues that arise.

A new stadium would also have just as many difficulties. Finding the perfect site for a start. I don't think it's black and white, it's not an easy decision either way.

The only thing that is clear is that we need to increase revenue if we are to continue to compete, every penny counts, and a new modern stadium would ultimately bring in more revenue, but is it worth the historical/financial cost?

Like I say I'm torn, I love Villa Park, but I can see the benefits if the owners decide to go down a different route.

1 hour ago, Captain_Townsend said:

When you look at Villa Park on Google Maps you realise that we actually have space where we need it - behind our worst stand, the North Stand.

Of course Witton Lane is tight but I am sure we have options we didn't have in 1993, and in 1993 we did buy the tow of houses that was there. So there is the precedent and potential to do that again. Or perhaps we could  biold quite a deep stand over the road itself, but at a lower height, and beginning closer to the pitch and using an over hang on the second tier (like the North Bank at Highbury)

I honestly see it as quite lazy to say we have maxed out Villa Park and have to build a new ground when we have such a large site, beside two rail stations, motorway, close to the city and beside a grand Historic House!

You aren't going to find a better site without spending an absolute fortune and that's before you so much as pour some concrete. 

I'm unsure where I sit on this new/stadium/redevelopment discussion.

However, you've made it sound like we are on the perfect site, but the simple fact we are having this discussion tells me it's not that black and white.

There are good transport links in theory, but the trains can't handle the capacity at the moment, you can be waiting for ages well after the game has finished to get on a train, there are numerous transport bottlenecks around the ground and between the ground and the motorway. Check out the 'Villa Park Transport' thread on here to see multiple accounts of transport issues we have. It's a big problem though some don't seem to like to admit it, I'd love to take my disabled father to a game, but the logistics of doing so are incredibly difficult without spending a lot of time either in traffic, waiting around to beat the traffic, or making the poor bugger walk 20/30 minutes to get to the ground and the same back when he can barely walk. Transport is an issue now, let alone when we add more capacity.

Developing the Doug Ellis is a far from easy project, it sounds simple to buy up a row of houses and build over the road, but it isn't easy to buy all of those houses without running into issues, people who don't want to move (see above post), and then to get the planning permission to build something as massive as a stand right next to the next row of houses. There's a reason so many clubs go to bigger sites where they don't have to deal with these types of headaches. We have space, but it's at both goal ends really, the two roads pen us in.

I love Villa Park, but the site in its current guise has issues that need resolving, if redevelopment of this site was so cheap and easy we'd of done it a long time ago, rather than continually kicking the can down the road. It's not easy to do, that's why it hasn't happened already.

I'm not saying we should move to a new stadium, but if we are to redevelop Villa Park we have to at least admit there are issues and find some realistic solutions to them and be patient because it's not a straightforward development to undertake.

7 minutes ago, burchy said:

If we do go for a new stadium, can we get one of those cool 3d billboards outside where the lion comes out of it. 

21 minutes ago, Rolta said:

Is he kicking up a fuss? Isn't he just saying it's funny that the club seem to have gone from the drop shadow version to basically the version he did (or the other guy). As in, it's funny that they might literally have copied him/them.

If the club are reading this CUT OUT THE 1874! It's such a pointless, random addition and it ruins the spacing.

Arguably mack off the star too.

He's not kicking up a fuss, but some were asking if he'd have grounds to do so, he doesn't.

It is very strange though, that the club have trademarked the design with the extra detailing, because I'm not sure they needed to. They already had all of the components that make it up trademarked and I don't think it's enough of a deviation to really warrant the extra trademark, but full disclosure I'm no expert on trademarking.

Personally, I think the detailing causes as many issues as it solves. It looks really nice in the render, and it looks slightly better than the non-detailed version at large-ish sizes, but at smaller sizes it looks a real mess. There are still fundamental issues with the design, no amount of extra detail is going to fix that.

I'm not really sure what is going on now, @OutByEaster? said the club is speaking with the FA and I've no idea how long that process will last or has been going on, but I'd be surprised if the detailed version is what has resulted from those talks.

Possibly they've seen the render and thought it looks nice, thought maybe we can use that somewhere, or someone else might use it somewhere, lets trademark it just in case.

The whole situation is a complete mess and the communication on the matter has been beyond poor, it might all be worth it if we got a great crest/brand at the end of it, but from what I've seen so far that's going to be far from the case.

1 minute ago, jayEm said:

That is hilarious and also insane.

I wonder if the club felt they couldn't use claret detailing on the lion given that would be an exact copy of this guy's work? How does copyright, IP etc. work in that scenario?

Seems such a shame to have the new version with the dark yellow detailing when there's the clearly superior claret detailing version out there.

The detailing was already trademarked by the club long ago, all he did was put it over another design that was also already trademarked by the club, and then did a fancy render, so I don't think legally he'd be able to kick up much of a fuss.

15 minutes ago, nick76 said:

I’ve worked days on this and you don’t want to see it

 

I'd critique this, but how can you critique perfection?

Farewell sweet prince.

Football is supposed to fun and what's more fun than having no idea what's about to happen? Bertie was certainly never predictable and for that I'm grateful.

In a world of rigid systems and production lines of disciplined players it was nice to have someone as mad as a bag of frogs.

Go well Bertie.

6 minutes ago, stewiek2 said:

I'm surprised football clubs haven't followed alot of the big global brands regards responsive logos. So for example, that Forest badge can easily be more legible smaller, you simple have just the tree and ground without the stars and word Forest. I get it's harder for clubs as the detailing is more on badges, but, as Man United's 3rd kit and Arsenal's and Liverpool shows, just the red devil, cannon and liverbird still make it clear who the club is. McDonalds have variant sizes if the full arches and wording and just arches when used smaller.

I guess the idea behind the lion facing the way the current round badge does is so that when smaller just that lion is used and distinguished at as Villa by facing that way and being claret.

As you've mentioned it's something that has happened on kits and I'd imagine some clubs with more modern crests (like the Juventus redesign) do have variations for different sizes or are at least more optimised to be used in different ways. 

I think part of the problem is that the Premier League itself is a brand, and all of the crests of the teams in it are part of that brand, so it's not like each club has total control of how their crest is used in every single piece of branding, they can put out guidelines for how their crests should be used, but not everyone that uses them will follow it to the letter, managing the different guidelines of 20 different brands would be difficult and from a legal standpoint they are just guidelines, you could maybe stop someone from using your crest altogether but that only usually happens in extreme examples.

Some of these crests are very old, or based on very old designs, it's difficult to modernise something so old to work on new media, whoever designed the original Burnley Crest wasn't thinking 'I need to make sure this scales down well for a profile picture on X in 80 years time'.

Finally, people (generally) do not like change, plenty fear it and crave the familiar. Even the Juventus redesign upset some people on here, that's a club from another country with no affiliation to us whatsoever, so you do have to be very careful in how you update things, incremental changes are more likely to be accepted.

6 minutes ago, Muller Yogurt Long Sleever said:

It's all true. The thinking was the star only appears as a shirt feature, not on the standard every day badge. Whether that's a possibility or not, doesn't really matter if the monstrosity is locked in - as I said it all feels pretty futile so just making the rules up! NURSE!

My make-believe version goes by thinking that if there's not a natural position for the star, and 1874 for that matter, they can be dropped - they can come through wider branding and communications, and will still be seen plenty.

If they were vital elements then design with them in mind in the first place - what we've been landed with is professional shoehorning.

Your design is nice, and having the star above is much better from a design point of view, for the sake of symmetry if nothing else.

However, we don't know 100% what all of the restrictions in place are. Can we change the colours? Can we change the lion? I try to design to what I think they may be, but it is all guesswork. The leaked crest suggests to me there are a lot more restrictions in place than I thought.

If there were no restrictions, no surveys to work to etc. I'd drop the star and 1874 as well, as you say it can be used elsewhere as part of the brand

To sort of visually back up what @ThunderPower_14 is saying here.

The Premier League will have guidelines on how much space a crest can take up on a kit, I don't know specifically what they are, but I'd imagine the area allowed is square in shape as this accommodates most logo/crest shapes.

So in the graphic below if you imagine the grey squares are the amount of space your crest is allowed to use, and see how much smaller you have to make your crest to accommodate a star above it, especially at smaller sizes.

You can also see that Forest can get away with losing the vertical space because they have a simple easily definable shape, even at small sizes, having two stars rather than one helps as well.

Detailed crests cannot afford to lose the vertical space as they are already fighting a battle at smaller sizes and need all the space they can get.

This is also likely why you don't get very tall or very wide crests.

Interesting decisions ahead for Liverpool you'd think. Alonso is the obvious name, though I'm not sure how much his and Klopp's styles overlap.

I'd expect there'd be a bit of player turnover/rebuild time for the next couple of seasons, it seems strange to say tear it up and start again, but that's often the best way when somebody steps down after so long. 

How much extra is Klopp getting out of these players? He signed pretty much everyone there at this point and has close ties to all of them, Will a new manager be able to get the same out of them? Likely not, and that's why it's not just a case of carry-on playing the same way and everything will be fine.

Alonso has done very well at Leverkusen but it's a big jump to one of the European heavyweights and the expectations that come with it, I'm sure in an ideal world Alonso would like a few more seasons in management before jumping into the big seat.

It's a tough gig for whoever takes over, much like Emery taking over from Wenger.

Klopp is an outstanding manager, and although he's said and done some daft things at times, he has my respect for the job he's done.

Like others, I hope this is nothing health-related and good luck to him whatever he does next.