Teale's 'tache

I always find it funny that the Konsa thread has so few pages for someone who's been here for so long and generally been very good, often takes going back a few pages to even find it, but when he makes an error like the weekend you can be sure that thread is getting bumped right up. Some players like Konsa and Dendonker seem to be easy targets for many because their games are more based on doing the simple things correctly and when combined with let's say less outgoing personalities, it's just not sexy enough. I think to some extent the same thing is now being played out with Kamara. One of his main jobs in the team is to do the dirty work, rarely is he going to score or assist by the nature of his role, he doesn't seem particularly outspoken, and so he's easy to just ignore until he makes a mistake like the others. I don't agree with it, I think it's very weird, as @TRO often says, you need a blend of players to be successful, that includes the ones some don't notice as much, the ones that do the dirty work or are just plain solid and reliable. Kamara is an excellent player, he's had many excellent games for us, he's still pretty young, and playing at the highest possible level. He's going to have the odd bad game, just like every other single player in the Premier League. We won't and shouldn't consider selling him unless the fee is astronomical.

Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. We missed Buendia in the press, which left our high line way more exposed than usual, and then without Mings it became very ragged very quickly, and Newcastle have exactly the kind of players to punish that. Throw in some very questionable officiating that prevented us from having any meaningful amount of ball and the end result is a bit of a drubbing. I don't think Newcastle did anything special, nor were they particularly that good, just very ruthless and efficient. When Mings went off it had a serious effect on the team, and some will scream that it shouldn't that they are professionals yadda yadda, but they are also humans, even Emery seemed in shock as he was stretchered off, and he's seen and done it all. It's just another bad day in what has been a bad week, not every day will be like this and I trust Mr Emery will be working quadruple time to ensure it doesn't happen again, even though a good portion of this week has been entirely out of his control. I did very much enjoy Watkins putting Botman on his ass though, small victories eh?

Thought I'd try and add a little positivity to the thread... The list of players that have had ACL injuries, recovered, and played at the same/similar level is very very long. Just a few examples: Van Nistelrooy did his ACL before moving to Man Utd, he had a pretty good career after that. Xavi did his ACL and returned the same season. Ibrahimovic, Shearer, Del Piero, Totti, and Baggio all did an ACL and played at very high levels for a long time after. A lot of these are a few years back as well, treatments have only improved since then. Any talk of 'career effectively over at top level' is very much worst-case scenario stuff. Wesley I believe did multiple ligaments which is why his was so bad. I like Buendia, I think he's a good player, an important player for us, but with Mr Emery in charge and a decent squad to work with I think we'll be okay.

Every signing comes with an element of risk, this seems to have a bit more risk than most, so a loan with an option to buy would probably be preferable to us, not so much for Galatasaray though. Emery and Monchi must see/know something to think he's worth taking a chance on. Personally, I hope we sign him and he's the second coming(Kenneth) of Carbone.

Yep, it was odd change of transfer policy, Nuno never really rotated and was very risk averse, his success was built with players pretty much already the finished article. Suddenly dumping a load of unprepared kids on him at a time when he was trying to change system was not very smart. Turns out a lot of them were good players, just didn't settle or like you say were not ready.

That's the thing, they had a couple of 10/10 windows, signing the likes of Neves, Jota, Jimenez, Moutinho on really good deals, got other good solid players like Jonny, Dendocker, and Saiss for reasonable fees, and they just thought it would last forever. It's hard to name a good value-for-money signing they've made since then, Dawson is the only one I can think of, Neto possibly.

I've grown up deep in dingle territory so a lot of my friends are Wolves, I wasn't much pleased with the whole 'mind the gap' nonsense, but I let it slide, I want midlands football to be vibrant and competitive and enjoyed their success to some degree, as it cheered my friends up as much as anything else. They were the media darlings during the 7th place finishes and European run, and now it seems they've befallen the same fate as many before them. They've been in a bit of a death spiral since covid really, Nuno seemed to have lost his touch during that time and decided to change a system that had brought them a lot of success, and following that the transfer strategy became increasingly more... odd. They've spent a lot on bad players and had important player regress due to age or injury and not really found a system that works for them despite numerous attempts, even Lopetegui who did a pretty good job keeping them up was chopping and changing constantly. There are many bad decisions that have brought them to this point, but Lopetegui was probably the best manager they could reasonably attract you'd think, losing him days before the start of the season is really poor. They still have some good players, I wouldn't say they are certain to go down, but we all know what it is like when the rot sets in; when ambition is abandoned. There are only so many seasons you can survive when the goals dry up and important players leave. It's real a shame after they'd got themselves into such a good position, this should be a cautionary tale for us, as good as things are right now, a dip in form, a bad decision, a bad signing, a bit of bad luck and things can snowball, we should know, it's happened to us before.

Unsure as to the purpose of this exercise, but hopefully the below is a rough approximation of what you are after...?

I've been wondering what Monchi's approach is to the press in this regard, I know Purslow was very keen not to have any kind of leaks of information, which has its benefits, but the press can also be quite useful if used correctly, I'd imagine a vastly experienced operator like Monchi might be more willing to leak a few bits here and there to speed up negotiations or throw competitors off course, we'll see in time I guess.

Cash counts as homegrown, which we do have to keep an eye on as the squad develops, considering he's also our only specialist right back I'd say it would be a very bad time to sell him. Maybe in a year or two as the squad is reshaped and some of the youth players coming through give us a bit more wiggle room with the homegrown quota. I think it would take a really silly bid for us to consider selling him this window.

Sometimes it helps

Seems Gregg Evans is moving on to golf coverage, and this new guy he mentions will be covering us. Glad to see the back of Gregg, to be honest, I've found him to be generally quite negative and to have very little enthusiasm for Villa. He's never really had a great deal of insight, every time I've seen him on a podcast it seemed to be such a chore for him to even talk about us, though when he's actually bothered to do a bit of journalism he's written some decent stuff. I don't think it's too much to ask for the Athletic to assign a journalist to Villa that doesn't have a clear dislike of the club. I might even start subscribing if they do.

This is the problem for me, settling for something because it's not too bad, I think the club as a whole should demand better than that in everything it does. The old badge had well-documented fundamental issues, even after a raft of adjustments from its original incarnation, this new crest has no fundamental issues so it's an improvement at least, but it's just so very safe, almost like we are trying to blend in with the crowd rather than stand out from it. You're right, there is no 'perfect' design, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't at least try and find something that can set us apart. We may well stick with the new design, and I wouldn't be mortified by that, but it would feel like there has been an opportunity missed, to me at least. Edit: Just quickly on the Audio/Visual thing, in my opinion, a good Marketeer would use something like that to their advantage, like Audio - our fans sing loud - Visual - we play beautiful football, or something like that. I think this is the kind of thing Mr Heck is very good at picking up on, so hopefully going forward we'll be making more use of what we have in a marketing sense.

With regards to the agency, it's all good and well hiring the best people, but you have to give them the tools and environment to work with to get the best results. In many ways hiring such a big agency and then restricting quite heavily what they can do creatively, was probably a bit of a waste of money, as a much cheaper agency could have produced the same design with those same restrictions for a fraction of the cost. The most talented creative people, in theory, should be working for the best agencies, but it doesn't matter how good you are if you are essentially painting by numbers, any competent designer can do that. We've paid for creativity and not really used it. I agree that it is an either/or, and I can see the argument for playing it safe, but is that who we are as a club? Safe? Is that who we want to be? Or do we want to strive for more? Strive to be different? Stand out from the crowd? I'm not saying one way is right and the other wrong, I can see both sides, we all have different interpretations of what our club is, and trying to compile all of those interpretations into one graphic is an impossible ask really. As for where we go from here, I know you've been involved in the process and so the new crest probably has more meaning for you, and I agree that we shouldn't be chopping and changing constantly, but if we are going to hang our hat on a design for the next 20-30 years we need to be damn sure it is the right design, or we'll be changing it again in a few years anyway. I get what you are saying with CEO's, but if we can build a successful brand then hopefully the next guy coming in won't need to change much, to break the cycle we need to build something that isn't worth tearing down. At the moment I don't think we have much of a brand, it's a mess everywhere you look, and having two crests makes it even worse. I'm hopeful Mr Heck can sort it all out, from what I've seen of him he seems very good at what he does, he gets branding and the role it can play, but I think we need to give him the time and leeway to do the job we are paying him for.

It may just be because he's in an AC Milan kit, but from the clips I saw, a tall attacking midfielder, strong enough to hold off opponents, with good vision, and quick feet, I was thinking more Kaka, which may be what interested Milan in the first place. Obviously, nowhere near the same level, just that sort of languid no-effort glide across the pitch kind of style. Also, Kaka had a burst of pace when needed, which is part of what made him so dangerous, from what I've seen De Ketelaere needs to work on his first 10 yards.

I appreciate the kind words. I think part of the problem with rebranding a club of any kind is that the club means so many different things to so many different people, you're never going to make everybody happy. I've just created something that says 'Aston Villa' to me, your interpretation of 'Aston Villa' is likely very different to mine and that is absolutely fine. I associate the diamond shape with Villa for a few reasons, one is a memory of my Dad driving us to a night game and seeing the huge 'AVFC' floodlights from the motorway on the way in, obviously, you stick the AV together you get a diamond, also on our walk into the ground we'd often pass Aston Hall, diamond patterns on the windows there, Diamond shaped windows in the old Trinity Stand and the large diamond on its side with the crest inside atop that same stand. Also, around the same time, our kit makers were Umbro and Shaun Teale my Dads' favourite player played in that kit. So as a shape, the diamond is something I very much associate with us, you likely have completely different experiences to me and so probably don't have that same association. I'm very fortunate that I have the ability to create these concepts, but I by no means expect everybody to agree with them, so it may not work for you, but it works for me and I'm happy enough with that.

I was a little surprised when I saw the new badge in monochrome because I'd done a monochrome version for a kit mock-up, without really giving it any thought, and it seems they went a completely different way with it. Not sure if my way makes it look any better, just interesting how two different designers can see things differently.

I had a quick look at a more 'square' diamond, but I think you lose the 'AV' too much, I did quite a few variations messing around, see below.

Awesome! Good work! Not overly surprised others have had the same idea, I've seen a few others on here that are similar as well. I first posted mine here (possibly a different thread) and on twitter in June 2022 It's evolved a bit since then!

Okay, I've gone back to my diamond design and refined it a little more. I've added the new lion, and made a few alterations to it to make it more 'rampant', and set it facing in the traditional direction. I don't mind the whole facing forward concept stuff, but to me personally, the lion facing left is just more 'Villa'. I've also removed the star, for the reasons @NurembergVillan has mentioned frequently, and eloquently. I've streamlined further by removing '1874', as it wasn't really needed and would have been unreadable at smaller sizes anyway. Anyway, on with the show... One more, just to show that this design at least is different from the rest of the crests in the Premier League Feel free to tell me I've got the colours wrong, you only like round badges, it doesn't say 'Aston Villa' in full, not adding a star somehow means I've degraded our entire history, it looks like a stonemasons symbol and it's crap. I'll not be listening anyway as I really need to get some work done!

That would be me, you can view the full thing here: https://www.behance.net/gallery/147539317/Aston-Villa-Crest-Redesign-Concept I'll post the images again below: I'm planning on exploring this and another idea further if work allows over the summer, just to pass the time as much as anything, I'll be sure to post here if I do.

I'm just going off what I can see in the Villa store online and what I heard in the 'For the Love of McGrath' podcast yesterday. From that the Pro shirt seems to have the piping in a different position, It may be that the render on the store is wrong though, I've not had a Pro shirt in hand to confirm either way.

The shirt in the tweet is the standard shirt, and the shirt in the render (with Douglas Luiz on the back) is the Pro version. You can tell because the piping on the shoulders are in different positions.

Really impressive, he explains exactly what I want our brand to be during this video, obviously, substitute the 76ers with Villa, and Philadelphia with Birmingham. It needs to be simple, it needs to be authentic, it needs to be consistent, and it needs to be engaging. Keep the traditional side of things we hold most dear, whilst moving forward and innovating. Honestly, I no longer care about the double crest this season as long as he can deliver the brand he talks about in this video. Our brand and marketing are a total mess at the moment, he's not going to fix it a few months into the job, it's going to take a few years, fortunately, he sees the long-term benefits of short-term pain. As a designer, I can tell you I'd love to work for a guy like this.