suttonpaul

Not "obviously" at all . If anything the odds are against us ever challenging under this regime. Amazing how low expectations are now. When you say "we are bankrupt", firstly it is nothing to do with "we" and secondly RL is no longer part of the "we". His only interest now is finding a buyer. Why is our turnover only 9th and wage bill. Surely the club needs to be run better. Increase turnover. Also i believe the wage bill will be down significantly next accounts Well most revenue for clubs out of Europe comes from TV money as you know so there is little between a Fulham and a Villa in terms of revenue especially when you factor we don't sell out our ground and our tickets are cheaper. If you want more revenue it has to start with more bums on seats and for all those bums to pay more to get in. It's the wage bill mate, too many pay offs (MON,GH, AMC) too many players not wanted by the manager who succeeded the previous then sold for peanuts or free but were brought for the going rate. This year will be better than the last numbers wise with revenue up and wages down, and once the bomb squad are gone it will be even better I expect the numbers from the 2014/2015 season to be much better but we wont see those for a few years after. We are seeing old data at the moment but it is still valid. The same point will still stand at the end of it Villa is in a group of clubs from 7th to 11 or 12th and there is less than a 5 million pound difference in their revenue so even when things are rosey on the finances again that is our 'rightful' finishing place. Anyone who is pissed with the above fact may as well support another team because that isn't going to change without a man city style investment where you buy your way a champions league spot to rise up those revenue tables anyone who moans about this fact yet still stays a fan will never be a happy fan. Just curious have you paid much attention to us? You talk like we're constantly finishing mid table. We're not. Under houllier our 9th place finish covered up what was an awful season and it's been 3 relegation battles in a row. Nah no attention I started supporting Villa this morning.

So we have the 8th highest income and haven't finished there for the last 3 years and probably won't this year. What's your point? I'm sorry what part of my point don't you get? I'll go over it more slowly for you. Well you're telling us we're chatting shit for being unhappy with the current state of the club. Your evidence for us chatting shit is that we have the 8th highest income. And like I said we haven't finished there for the past 3 years and probably won't this year. So what exactly are we chatting shit about? Is that really what I said? Or is that the 'Big_John_10' version of what I said which is completely not what I said? 2010/11 - 8th 49pts 14th 46 pts Villa 9th 48 pts (8th 49pts 14th 46pts) 6 places 3 points 2011/12 - 8th 52pts 14th 45 pts Villa 16th 38 pts (10th 47pts 15th 43pts) 5 places 4 points 2012/13 - 8th 49pts 14th 41 pts Villa 15th 41 pts (9th 46pts 16th 41pts) 7 places 5 points The above table shows that there is a clear correlation of how many points are needed for us to finish in the maximum place our revenue allows us to. It also shows there is a clear pack of clubs just after that place each year so it isn't very clear until the end of each season where the club will finish as if there is only 3 to 5 points in it for 5 to 7 places what I am saying isn't dumb and it is clearly truth. A quick look at a list of each PL club and their revenue backs this up.....

Shouldn't all of this thread be here too http://www.villatalk.com/index.php/topic/8405-the-randy-lerner-thread/page-523

It's the wage bill mate, too many pay offs (MON,GH, AMC) too many players not wanted by the manager who succeeded the previous then sold for peanuts or free but were brought for the going rate. This year will be better than the last numbers wise with revenue up and wages down, and once the bomb squad are gone it will be even better I expect the numbers from the 2014/2015 season to be much better but we wont see those for a few years after. We are seeing old data at the moment but it is still valid. The same point will still stand at the end of it Villa is in a group of clubs from 7th to 11 or 12th and there is less than a 5 million pound difference in their revenue so even when things are rosey on the finances again that is our 'rightful' finishing place. Anyone who is pissed with the above fact may as well support another team because that isn't going to change without a man city style investment where you buy your way a champions league spot to rise up those revenue tables anyone who moans about this fact yet still stays a fan will never be a happy fan.

So we have the 8th highest income and haven't finished there for the last 3 years and probably won't this year. What's your point? I'm sorry what part of my point don't you get? I'll go over it more slowly for you.

God some of you chat balls. I think we can all agree money is everything in football these days. Heres a fact for you..... Villa have the 8th highest income and the difference between 7th and 11th highest income is only a few million. Therefore it is realistic that where our finishing position should be. You can go on about being in the Premiership all the time but the stark facts are that is what we receive so that is what we spend.

I hate myself for writing this .... If I were in charge of Villa and was going to run a break even club....... I would spend less on transfer fees and wages by buying players like we have recently and instead of progressing by selling the high value players after a few years and buying players of a higher price tag than before ala what Spurs have done recently I would do something radically different. I would get a lot more scouts of proven ability all over the world looking for very young players of say 10 to 21 years old (the older end of the scale would be players we have spotted for the first team and we want to nick them for our club on the cheap) and build a much larger academy than we currently have whilst also building a large private school. The reason for it is the following....... We could sell the opportunity to prospective youth players (and parents) both domestic and internationally as come to Villa we think your kid has potential and in return we will give him the best training facilities but also a top class private education in a boarding school. It makes it a no brainer for those parents as if the child fails to be a player he will have the education to go on and succeed else where and we can suck up the talent of the other players who do make it because they didn't want to take the risk of quitting education early. Further to that once this had become a success I would extend that opportunity for those families to move to the school/training complex by building an estate of houses but this would be 20 years down the line once this system had become very successful and paid for itself so that it knocks down the barrier separating parents from their children. Having the children at boarding school will allow the club to control everything from morals, diet, to what they read etc so that we can not only turn out skilful players who are more likely to be loyal but also people who are disciplined and well educated. Time to shoot me down as I know it is a radical idea but it is what I believe there is a big space for in football.

Wait. You've never said we should be happy with midtable? If you think I am replying to that with a full post you must be joking, read the last post again

Nobody would be happy with it long term, but short term it's fine. It's called building Suttonpaul certainly seems to be suggesting this is what we should be happy with Not once have I said this. Listen up ladies and gents I am going to share a secret with you.... The secret to happiness is exceeding expectations, if you meet expectations you are satisfied and if you don't meet expectations you are unhappy. It is that simple. Villa as a club have the 9th highest revenue, being realistic though as there is only a couple of million in it and some owners spend money out of there own pocket to find things villa should be 8th to 13th going by cash coming in so if you finish there I will say you should be satisfied we all know in our sport money doesn't lie. If we finish above that we should be happy and if below 13th we should be unhappy if I am being simplistic for John. of course there are expectations to the rule what if the person in 10th only has one point more than us and we are in 14th should we be unhappy? Well mediocre I would say. With regards to building as another poster later mentioned that is what Villa needs to do if they are ever to move forward for that we need to do all the usual stuff be sensible with spending until an opportunity to go above whatever our current station is at the time ala Spurs right now. We need to buy 90% players under 24 so they have sell on value and a chance to get better. But I really think we need to as a group of fans come to terms with our place in football which I mentioned in an earlier post and villabromsgrove summed up nicely so we can be satisfied rather than unhappy get villa park full, rocking and intimidating. Expand the stadium rinse and repeat. To become better than what we are we must do it differently to the other clubs..... the above is different.

So lets say that people real football memories start when they are say 13 (they can remember everything that happened that year and it really meant something to them. That means for our last major success in 1982 you would have needed to be born in 1969 making you 44 everyone below this age or definitely 40 basically hasn't seen us win a major trophy. Lets pretend the League Cup is of Major significance that means no one under 30 has seen us win anything AT ALL. You can say the big club thing is in the minds of individuals and you are right but I think when it comes to this kind of debate that is important because in the mind of an individual that THINKS AVFC is a massive club they will always be unhappy as the stats very very clearly show we are not and that creates discontent.

If Man Utd won nothing for the next 30 years, and only 50,000 turned up week in week out, do you think their fanbase would "join the real world" and accept they are not a big club any more? No but if they had won 1 league and 1 European cup more than 30 years ago and not much else of note in a century then I would tell them to join the real world however we will have to wait until we are all dead to see that hypothetical come to pass. We have won a awful lot more than you suggest. Ok play it your way since 1920 our wonderful club has won the following (listed as modern competitions)..... 1 Premier League 1981 1 Champions League 1982 1 Super Cup 1982 (worthless cup) 1 FA Cup 1957 5 League Cups 1961,1975,1977, 1994, 1996 We have won nothing that a GREAT club would class as worthwhile since 1982, Austin powers wasn't even swinging when we won our last FA cup and its even been almost 20 years since we won the crappy league cup. Can we stop making out like we are Utd or Real now and realise that we are a mid table premier league club so we stop these delusions of grandeur and concentrate on supporting our club by attending matches with full voices which is all we can do as fans to help our club (give it money and make it an intimidating ground for the opposition to play at) Funny this doesn't appeal to Spurs who have pushed themselves as a big club for years. Or for the chairman you defend, who came into this club talking about how big we are and continued to do so up to the point he lost interest in his play thing. We are a big club, we are undervalued and nothing will change that, not even a chairman who has done so much wrong. We are a big club based on what? What is a big club? I thought a big club was a club that won stuff recently and challenges regularly to win things.

If Man Utd won nothing for the next 30 years, and only 50,000 turned up week in week out, do you think their fanbase would "join the real world" and accept they are not a big club any more? No but if they had won 1 league and 1 European cup more than 30 years ago and not much else of note in a century then I would tell them to join the real world however we will have to wait until we are all dead to see that hypothetical come to pass. We have won a awful lot more than you suggest. Ok play it your way since 1920 our wonderful club has won the following (listed as modern competitions)..... 1 Premier League 1981 1 Champions League 1982 1 Super Cup 1982 (worthless cup) 1 FA Cup 1957 5 League Cups 1961,1975,1977, 1994, 1996 We have won nothing that a GREAT club would class as worthwhile since 1982, Austin powers wasn't even swinging when we won our last FA cup and its even been almost 20 years since we won the crappy league cup. Can we stop making out like we are Utd or Real now and realise that we are a mid table premier league club so we stop these delusions of grandeur and concentrate on supporting our club by attending matches with full voices which is all we can do as fans to help our club (give it money and make it an intimidating ground for the opposition to play at)

If Man Utd won nothing for the next 30 years, and only 50,000 turned up week in week out, do you think their fanbase would "join the real world" and accept they are not a big club any more? No but if they had won 1 league and 1 European cup more than 30 years ago and not much else of note in a century then I would tell them to join the real world however we will have to wait until we are all dead to see that hypothetical come to pass.

Sorry, but you don't seem to understand. Randy doesn't have debt. The club owe him money, but there will be no financial problems like Leeds unless Randy decides to call in the debt, which would be a fairly strange thing to do since he owns 100% of the club. With no premier money he would sell assets and raise his money back, selling is off for scrap to the highest bidder. He foes not care anymore and relegation would force his hand to get what he can. You're assuming quite a lot. If he wanted to sell the club for what it's worth the last thing he'd want to do would be to plunge it into a debt crisis while doing so. You're a real worrier, aren't you Fwiw I hope he sells if he can find someone with deeper pockets than he has, but while he's lending money to the club I don't think we can complain too much. He's been pruning and pruning for a few years, all because of his own a decisions which have caused the club to drop like a stone, three relegation battles, the loss of key players, a promise that we will spend money (Randy doesn't mind the fee) but wages are the problem, yet we spent net 10m in the window and Lambert - a cracking manager - had to choose between backup to Benteke and an attacking or holding mid because the money isn't there. We are not an investment fund. We are a football club. You might enjoying guessing where the next cut back comes. I enjoy winning games and wondering if we can get to Wembley or finish as high as possible and not just hope we might survive. The key is in the name. AVFC. one of the greatest clubs of all time, one of the names that should be at the top fighting it out, as a football club should be. The chairman has given up, the sooner he goes the better, so we can finally look to that pitch again and see us as a Football club, where everybody top to bottom wants the best players and where a manager doesn't have to pick between two players but can get those he wants. Your second point is good. As for calling me a real worrier, you're one of Lerner's little sheep, but that is fine, we can't all see it the same. If I was that much of a worrier I wouldn't have 100% faith in our manager, would I? One of the greatest clubs nearly a century ago. If someone super rich wanted to buy us we would be sold.

Ill be boring and say it again no chairman should be expected to put tens or hundreds of millions into a club knowing he wont get it back and you get what you pay for. If Villa is such a massive club why don't we sell out with our prices near the lowest in the league? Why don't we have high priced commercial sponsorship deals? Join the real world.

time after time every report shows most of the money from these ever larger tv deals goes on players wages and therefore doesn't drastically affect the price of a club. e.g inter is for sale at the moment for 150m

I don't remember too many hoping our new billionaire owner would never spend any of his own money when he first bought the club. We have mid table revenue thanks to our owner and I'd be surprised if we haven't dropped lower when last seasons figures are released. And it's not like we're finishing mid table is it? The last two years have been the worst we've ever had in the premier league so we haven't even been able to manage what you say historically most clubs do. We finished a couple of points off mid table...... also you are taking the message too literal like I said 8th place was 1m above 11th was 5m less. So the difference isn't massive especially if one of those clubs does have an owner who dips into his own pocket. You are also forgetting that when rebalancing the books in our case and I am looking at players we know have gone or are going in the summer to come that they have been like leaches on our finances (not blaming them for staying they have a contract and a right for that contract to be upheld) so once that is done the accepted logic is we can spend like the other teams around us revenue wise who don't spend above their own means for example Everton. Secondly I don't give a toss what fans think he should spend his own personal money on it isn't their business if the club spends what it makes and he isn't taking money out of the club then they have sod all to moan about with regards to spending. If you want to criticize him then criticize the managerial appointments and the lack of preparedness when taking over the club by not bringing in industry experts to help run the club. You say he has made us mid table revenue wise...... he hasn't that is where we were before.

Based on 2009/10 revenue we made the Deloitte top 20 list of richest clubs in the world coming in 20th spot. There were 6 other Prem clubs on that list - Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City and Spurs so in Prem terms we had the 7th highest revenue in 2010. Correct but that was us in the Europa League getting a bit bigger attendances at game and to be fair it was just barely above many other clubs like 5m or so difference in reply to John It wouldn't seem hypocritical if you understood the point I am making reference revenue splits. What I can say to you john on your point of whom has overtaken us one of those that moves us a place back is Man City for a start and Yes we are 9th highest in the league for revenue and I know in the season mark was speaking about we were 6th. I have seen figures for the season ending in 2012 and 8th was Everton whos revenue was 1m higher than ours. When you look at the figures it backs up my point and the teams who over took us are mega rich new owner or literally have the same revenue as us. E.g Fulham 2 places behind us only take 5m less in revenue than us it is hardly going to set us apart with who we can buy expecially when they have the pull of London. Historically clubs finish roughly in the league where their revenue suggests they should ours suggests mid table so guess where we should finish..... I go back to my original point no owner should have to fund a club and clubs should only spend what they receive. If we want higher places then we need to have higher revenue now as fans aren't just going to turn up more to games and even if they did it wouldn't make a huge difference I would suggest moving the debate to two different areas the first is what to do with our savings we have made and will make in the coming summer and secondly should we sell our naming rights to the training ground/stadium etc to boost revenue other clubs have. Firstly I think the TV revenue would be much better spent on lowering ticket prices like the German League and expanding the stadium so in future we have many more fans to buy shirts etc, get family's in the ground etc. I also couldn't give a toss what the ground is called its always going to be Villa Park to the fans and it could provide the cash injection needed. In short we need to build slow and think long term if we ever want to catch up without a Saudi Oil playboy.

Strange argument because there is more money in football now? Yea where does that money come from? That's right TV! And who gets that money? That's right everyone! Therefore AVFC was more financially able back then as we got higher ticket sales etc than say a Southampton now it is a very small difference. I didn't say he was forced to buy the club or act like it. I simply said he has the right to run it so it breaks even. I Find it amusing you think otherwise. It's different because under Lerner we've allowed teams to over take us in terms of revenue. Another reason we get worse with him. Under Doug there was still tv money that everyone got, now there's more of it. Yea you really don't get this do you... Under Ellis a bigger percentage of ALL clubs income was ticket sales etc in comparison to TV payments when comparing the ratio for todays PL clubs therefore what I said is a very valid point. On your point of other clubs overtaking us in terms of revenue received.... please list said clubs and proof.

Strange argument because there is more money in football now? Yea where does that money come from? That's right TV! And who gets that money? That's right everyone! Therefore AVFC was more financially able back then as we got higher ticket sales etc than say a Southampton now it is a very small difference. I didn't say he was forced to buy the club or act like it. I simply said he has the right to run it so it breaks even. I Find it amusing you think otherwise.

Still waiting for a reply to my last post John don't dodge the question.

The clubs main source of income is off a tv deal not what villa fans specifically give the club. I thought football was about winning and being competitive. If the owners aim is to have a business that breaks even then maybe he shouldn't have bought a football club and invested his money elsewhere. Amen to that. Perhaps then we would be playing real football in the lower divisions, and one or two of our impatient contributors would be populating the Man City and Chelsea boards. Another childish response. Did you say the same to anyone who held up a £ sign years ago? I guess it shows how great Lerner has been when your argument is we probably would have gone down if he hadn't bought the club. Not sure why that means we should be happy The difference between now and pound sign days is that 20 million back then would get you somewhere, these days it gets you nowhere. Please explain why anyone should come in buy the club for 100 - 150m quid then fund over and above continually what we receive in revenue. PLEASE EXPLAIN

It would work out with me if fellow fans realised the club isn't owned by them it is owned by the guy who paid the money for it, and there is no written rule it should make losses every year just so you can be happy. RL has the right to make it run so it breaks even. No one is saying it should make a profit that isn't really what owning a sports club is about but breaking even spending when you get means the club will always be around and will buy what it deserves as that is all the income us as fans have given it. Want more? Pay more.

Wow. Awesome, a reply from one of the people that post was aimed at.

waaa waaa!!!! Grow up he owns the club and can do as he sees fit. Don't like it then done spend money on its products or watch tv games that contribute to the clubs coffers like a sky subscription. Fact is he doesn't want to throw money at a COMPANY he owns for it to make losses. Move on if someone wanted to buy the club who was super rich they would anyway therefore no one does.