FLVillan

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.

I've lived here for 32 years, even coached "sahccer" at a college (decent level) for 25 of those. Trust me, I've driven home the very points you raise many many many times... When I go over to family on Sundays and they're watching the NFL I ask them how the fake rugby match is going..... During baseball season I take great pleasure in telling them about Rounders, a game played by pre-teen schoolgirls in England...

Nike are the league-supplier for the NBA, ie they supply every team, as is the case with the NFL also. Have been for about ten years, since they ditched Adidas. So Heck didn't really have anything to do with that decision. Most professional sports in the US have league-wide suppliers. The only input from the teams is colours and some design tweaks, but they have no choice on who they get them from. Interestingly though, the clubs can sell "licensed" replicas and apparel under other brands.... They call them uniforms, which as a military family does grind the gears a bit.... The word cleats was adopted for "soccer" (pronounced sahccer ) from the footwear worn in baseball and American Football. To be fair on that one, they're hardly "boots" are they either, so each culture has some work to do to get that terminology fixed....!

You have to remember though, that the old Trinity road stand had mosaic badges both on the brick and the roof of the stand that didn’t match the club badge, so I think the thought process of having to redo absolutely everything, especially the Holte mosaics isn’t really critical…

For 30+ years now we've had a terrible badge. It started with the 1992 version and has become progressively worse. Yellow on (light) blue is an awful color combination, with a terrible contrast. How anyone running ANY kind of business in 2024 cannot see the importance of top-level branding simply blows my mind. My wife and I own a small business and we spent good money on our business logo, ensuring it would be unique, instantly recognizable and effective across the entire gamut of digital media, print and even apparel and promotional products. We made sure it would be visible from distance on any colour background. We have ZERO graphic design background, a tiny budget and a small focussed and specialized clientele. But we have a logo/brand that works and has received universal positive feedback. Now more than ever, branding is the most critical business marketing and sales tool. And yet, Aston Villa, with essentially infinite resources, 150 years of history, and a clear pair of colours that DO compliment each other cannot get it even vaguely correct. Embarrassing.

Basics done well here. 1. Our colours being claret and blue. 2. The contrast being appropriate for viewing (ie. dark against light). 3. The name of the club. Quite honestly, if the club presented ANY one of these as the new badge I'd be perfectly OK with it. Would I change anything? Possibly move the star above the badge and make the 1874 slightly bigger, but those are just my personal preferences and wouldn't overtly change my opinion... My personal favorite is the top-centre version. I couldn't care less what way the Lion is facing, or if the star/1874 is included or not, or if it's a two colour border or one. I just want our badge to be claret and blue, with the club name in full and to look professional.

Absolutely awful. The one thing that needed fixing, more than anything was the yellow-on-light-blue. If they had fixed just that I could have lived with almost anything else. Not only did they not fix that issue, but just basically shifted the lion to the top and pasted Aston Villa below. Amateur hour!

Doug is an excellent player, but if he's playing two positions at once it's no wonder he's looked a bit tired recently... I honestly think any team, including Citeh and the Dippers, will drop a level when their best players are out. Rodri missing for Citeh is the most glaring example. They have players who are maybe as technically good as he is, but there is always going to need to be a tactical tweak here and there, or someone coming in that hasn't got that same understanding with the players around him. It could be argued that Citeh have actually failed to manage the problem, because they don't have a natural replacement for Rodri. Phillips is clearly deemed not good enough and their next-best option is to move Stones into midfield - and our midfield ran rings around him... Citeh's system relies heavily on Rodri and before that Fernandinho. They've been fortunate that neither of them have had extended periods out of the team....

Probably transitioning as was too representative of toxic masculinity...

Patriots have always reverse-mirrored Villa. When I arrived in the US (early 90's) Villa had some great teams, won a few trophies while the Patriots were absolutely . Then the Pats got new ownership and started winning everything in sight, and we drifted towards relegation. Then Villa got NSWE the same year Brady left the Pats....

Anything involving Bluenoses is possible, but I don't think so....she could pick who she wanted tbf... I certainly seemed to play a lot better when she came to watch her kid brother play....

I actually played with Clarkson as a 14 year old. Olton Ravens. 1983ish. His sister is Calum O'Hare's mum.

I don't think he's dropped off to be honest. With the recent keepers we'd had before him, he was such a massive upgrade that we definitely over-hyped him. Add that to the World Cup win and all the awards, the expectations are through the roof. He's a very very good goalkeeper.

I actually mentioned it in my very brief assessment of the match in the post match thread. He was cheating over, expecting a shot across him. Broke the cardinal rule of goalkeeping. If he'd been correctly positioned he would have saved that shot with his feet.

Given the injuries/suspension and number of games we've played that was a very decent performance and an even better result. If Moussa wasn't aiming for Row Z in the north stand second-half we'd have been out of sight by the time they got their second. Martinez was culpable on that one - shouldn't get beaten at his near post like that, he was cheating over. With our history in the Christmas period, a blip was inevitable, but if one away defeat and a home draw was the blip this year, then I'm happier than a pig in

I honestly don't think it was even soft. I've had the bottom of my foot kicked while moving - sent me flying! And I was carrying a bit more timber than young Jhon....