FLVillan

100% on this one. Before the Holte was demolished post-Taylor report, the official capacity was 48,000. And I would bet my house on that figure being exceeded many times, especially during the period from 1978-1983 when the Holte was stuffed full and they always announced the attendance as 47, 9** or 47, 8**. They were clearly fudging those attendance figures (as did all clubs in that time period). Infrastructure and roads around the ground were far worse in those days.

My top ten has varied over the years. In the 80's it would have been all about the hooligan elements plus local clubs, so, Millwall, Birmingham, West Ham, Leeds, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Man Utd, West Brom, Coventry, Leicester. Nowadays it's about the fake big clubs and the money that they've ruined the competition with, so, Citeh, Chelsea, Newcastle would replace the likes of Portsmouth, Millwall and West Ham. My dislike of Man Utd, Leeds and Liverpool plus the locals has stood the test of time.. Arsenal to replace Portsmouth as under Arteta they have become a horrible club.

Their fans in the 80's. On a par with Millwall, West Ham and Birmingham. Used to be known as the 6-57 crew (named after a London-bound train). Terrorized folks all over the country, vandalized trains and stations and were known to attack anyone at random, football fan or not.

The only way Howe's style of football could work long-term is with a massive squad of players. When his Bournemouth team were relegated they also had a big injury list. Not a coincidence.

That would always be the best way, but I don't think January would be the time for that as most teams want their best players to see out the season. Unless we can find another Moreno!

When you hire someone to do a specific job you have to let them have the scope to do that job. He was put into place to handle the business side of the club and therefore the responsibility and accountability that goes with it. They will be watching this situation with more than just a passing interest, but they won't interfere unless they see the situation spiraling. Like the Gerrard situation for example. They will give Heck enough rope to either do a decent job or hang himself. If he somehow gets the fans back on side and our commercial revenue goes through the roof he will have fulfilled his remit. If however, his commercial gains are marginal and he is universally disliked by the fans, then they will make a change. One thing we have seen consistently from NSWE is a lack of drama - even when Pitarch ran his mouth in the media claiming to represent the views of the club, they waited until the end of the season before sacking him.

And therein lies the problem with yellow on blue. The badge will only ever sit on a claret background on home shirts and occasional training gear/apparel. The rest of the time it will be on other coloured backgrounds, especially white (most websites, all printed media, the away kit etc etc). The badge should have contrasting colour shades, not two light colours. The fact that we have those two colours already makes it farcical that the club have chosen not to use them together. Light blue and claret, yes. Gold and claret, yes. Gold and light blue, no. If we have three colours to utilize (claret, light blue, gold), make sure you use two that contrast each other. It makes any image much clearer to view/see from distance and in small applications. Hate to admit it, but those hammers on the Wet Spam badge are far more visible than the Lion on the Villa one. If you were a non Villa person looking at those two badges, you'd have to be three feet away from McGinn to know what that yellow shape is.

He'll turn those two support columns on the north stand into a free-fall ride, do a massive water slide off the upper tier of the stand and turn the executive boxes into a giant tank with dolphins and killer whales. The roller coasters will replace Villa Live in the car park. The warehouse will become the food court. Just you watch!

Yes, hence why he's free to leave. And my point was that his REPLACEMENT has to be good enough to slot in..... otherwise, what's the point....

I would speculate that, before a ball was kicked this season, Unai saw Chambers as adequate cover at right-back and as a holding midfielder. If memory serves, I think he even alluded to it in an interview in pre-season. I think he's changed his mind after the way Chambers played at Legia (and he clearly hasn't changed his mind in training since), hence why Chambers hasn't been used and is now free to leave. At 28, Chambers still has plenty of football left in him and would probably be a great addition for a low-to-mid-table club. I can see him at a Luton as replacement for Lockyer for example. The problem we will face in replacing Chambers is finding a player or players who are of the right age, experience, and ability level, who are willing to bide their time to get an opportunity, but are also good enough to slot in when needed.

Will it be available in the Jewelry Quarter? Only local gold for me....

And it makes us feel better, having a place to blow off steam about stuff that we care passionately about. Far better than screaming at the sky.... and for the record, he's an American-version of Xia, not the actual one...

Everything from the last 30 years has been awful, agreed. It's why there was so much support for the round badge - that one was the nicest one we've had in most fans' living memory. In the early 70's we had a stand-alone Lion on some of the kits. The striped badges from the 90's were terrible, and then were compounded by the Lerner monstrosity.

It's predominantly yellow so assume it was designed by Heck....

Sneaky is the nicest way to put it. The description I would use isn't repeatable here...

1. You don't build a brand by changing a company logo three times inside two years. That's basic business common sense. 2. North stand was built when we were in the top six and won the league cup. Witton Lane stand was built just after we finished second in the league. The Holte End was rebuilt when we were top six and had just won the league cup. Trinity was rebuilt the year we reached the FA Cup Final, the league cup semi final and finished sixth. And I don't remember a solitary peep or complaint from Saunders, Atkinson, Little or Gregory. To suggest that Emery is giving his opinion on a new stand is laughable and quite frankly disrespectful of his laser focus on producing a winning team. I believe The Athletic "reporting" about as much as I believe Epstein killed himself.. 3. He inherited two well thought-out, properly researched projects that had seen a great deal of work put in, that were universally accepted and in most cases, welcomed by the MAJORITY of Aston Villa fans.

Now there's a visual that I didn't need on a Friday morning...

1. Absolutely spot on! No badge will ever be universally accepted, but with close-to 80% the round badge was a clear winner and a massive upgrade on what we had. 2. Spot on again. I don't think Ron Saunders gave 2 seconds of thought into the decision on knocking down the witton end in 1977! And I don't remember Ron Atkinson having input into the demolition of the Witton Lane stand. 3. 3 for 3! Some really positive moves made by his predecessor to plant to get our stadium a place to be proud of and bring us into the 21st century, with a load of work done with architects, the city council, transport authorities, UEFA and other entities to get everything ready to go, and to replace the horrible badge(s) that we've endured since 1993. The Gerrard debacle aside, there wasn't too much that could be pinned on Purslow to be fair. I wish he (Purslow) had swallowed his pride and stuck around after the Monchi appointment. The new badge would now be simply integrated into everything and the new north stand plans would be moving along nicely. To date, all Chris Heck has shown is that he's an American version of Tony Xia. Dishonest. Even Xia's regime produced a couple of decent kits.

The manager of the month curse! Say it aint so!!!! Fully deserved. Should have won it more than just the twice in his first 14 months given what he has done.....

Because our club colours are claret and blue. It's that simple. Plus two light colours superimposed on each other looks washed out, and not visible from all distance and/or small format. I don't understand why gold/yellow/beige on light blue would appeal to anyone. Our colours (claret and blue) have great symmetry and complement each other perfectly. That was the case in the 19th century and still is today. Would you paint a wall in your house yellow with light blue trim? If you wanted a "villa themed" space in a setting would you go with yellow and blue? Take a look at our current badge in small digital settings and tell me it's easy to see that the yellow is clearly a rampant lion. It just looks like a yellow blob.

I think Nassef facilitating an opening for negotiation and sponsorship could hardly be considered some type of big conflict as long as he isn't personally benefitting financially. I mean it's not like our owners are a state-run entity that also happen to have a majority ownership of an airline that has "sponsored" the stadium, training ground, shirt adverts, made it the "official airline" of the club and plastered every advertising board with their own state-owned company.... Take a bow Etihad....

And the "PL Era" has existed for 31 years, or 20% of our existence as a club. Shield or not, our badges have been utter crap since the round badge was replaced. The ONLY thing that Small Heath fans can legitimately level at Villa is that they've retained their badge heritage while we have jumped around with ludicrous design after ludicrous design. It's not the nostalgia of 1982, it's the fact that the round badge was the last decent one we had. Anyone with any level of decent eyesight can see that yellow on light blue is a ridiculous combination, especially for a club that is claret and blue. I grew up with the round badge, went to Rotterdam and Highbury etc etc. and associate that period with us playing in claret and blue with a claret and blue badge. Whether it is round, shield, oval, triangle or flipping octagonal isn't my major concern. I just want it to be claret and blue and visible as an Aston Villa badge/Lion from more than three feet away.....

To be fair, NASA just reported they just intercepted Tonev's final shot for Villa - it was on a collision course with Kane's penalty from the world cup....

Not to be overly anti-Heck (as I already have a strong bias toward disliking him ) but fixing the Castore disaster presented itself to him on a silver platter. We will see any major brand supplier for next year as a massive win, given what happened with the castore shirts. As it stands we will be getting much nicer kit with two cartoonish amateur logos....

In my opinion Heck has no understanding whatsoever about English culture or what "fans" really are in football/British culture. In American sports, fans don't have the same vested interest, multi-generational pass-down or local attachment. It's why you'll never hear American fans referred to as "supporters." In English football it is tribal in nature, it is 100% ingrained into people, into families. Even non-sporting types in England know who their local team is... Americans "pick" the team they want to follow and will change if a superstar player moves. Teams themselves relocate to cities thousands of miles away to get a shiny new stadium or to tap into a target population. American fans are "customers" first and are treated as such. I laughed when Heck said he had been quiet for his first six months because he was "learning" about the club and its history etc. Well, he's either a very bad student, or he's completely full of . You can learn Villa's factual/statistical history very quickly with a stadium tour, a few videos and read a book or two. Understanding the history and what makes the club what it is, is whole different prospect. Teams here in the US make changes to logos and color-schemes on a whim with little to no involvement from their fans. For example, when the Patriots changed their shade of blue from royal to navy, the first the fans knew about was when the new gear went on sale just before the season started. The motivation for that change was 100% focused on sales. At the time, royal blue was an unfashionable colour, so the Patriots and the Buffalo Bills both eliminated it and went with navy blue. Heck has made a rod for his own back by completely misreading two massive club decisions that directly affect us. He needs to backtrack, fix and apologize, or he needs to leave.