TRO Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 (edited) I too pay attention to the comments on here, not the author. Some folk seem to want to look for ulterior motives Edited March 4, 2014 by TRO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smetrov Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 A genuine question to all of those who believe RL should go, who do you want to replace him? What do you see that owner doing? How much of a commitment to the Club would you expect him to make? Would that be simply a gift to the club or in the form of a loan? How hands on would you expect him to be? How much wealth do you anticipate that he has? and then, taking all of that into account, why on earth do you think that he would pour that money into a loss making football club that has never generated enough income to compete on equal financial terms with the big clubs? I'm just curious, because for all the faults that RL may have, I see plenty of clubs in a far worse position in terms of owners than us and particularly those that have been bought post-2008, both in England and internationally. RL has regularly put substantial amounts of personal wealth into the club, and i think the recent decision to convert almost GBP100m of that from debt into equity deserves far more credit that he is given... I have been involved in the sale of two premier league clubs, one pre-GFC and one post... its certainly a very different world to the glory days that saw clubs like chelsea and man city acquired by someone looking to make a statement to the tunes of hundreds of millions or more... New UK owner? Asian - chinese? Indonesian? Malaysian? Singaporean? Russian? are there any left that would pour hundreds of millions into Villa? American? South American? Middle Eastern? Am genuinely curious as to where people think that a new owner is going to come from and on what terms he is going to come in.... This post is way too sensible. We have had one man sink £250m into the club. I can't imagine that another one will be found. For better or worse a new owner will be here in the next couple of years, and I am pretty resigned to the fact that it won't be someone who is going to pump billions into the club. That said the way we are being run at the moment is half cocked - We have a chairman who hasn't been in attendance for over a year - a CEO who in my opinion inspires very little confidence, as a result of this environment the manager is never really held to account over results. A start for me would be a chairman who appears to give a shit, A CEO or a board than can provide a balance between keeping the club on an even keel, without trimming the spending power of the manager to wigan style levels....Whats needed now is a top to bottom revolution of the style that Graham Taylor did when he came in 1987. As I have said before, if a chairman can't bring the megamillions - then he must bring sufficient expertise to squeeze the maximum potential out of the club .....at the moment we are getting neither... 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
useless Posted March 4, 2014 Share Posted March 4, 2014 If someone can afford to buy us in the first place for the rumoured asking price then It must follow that they'll have to be pretty loaded. So I imagine we will either be stuck with Randy for a very long time or the next owners will be very wealthy indeed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rodigan Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 The suggestion that Randy Lerner has made a £250m "donation" to the club is misleading. briny, fair enough i take that statement back, or at least qualify it.... the point that i was trying to make in perhaps overly simple terms is that randy has put substantial amounts to the club - actually, having read into it, its substantially more than the gbp250m that i mentioned.... secondly, the fact that he has waived substantial amounts (by converting it into equity), most recently almost gbp100m, by converting that money into equity, he no longer has recourse to that money - in that regard, i was trying to make the comparison to it being a donation.... the simple fact is that randy has put huge amounts into the club and is no longer looking to be repaid for much of it... that is something that i, for one, give him some credit for as an owner... 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big_John_10 Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 the simple fact is that randy has put huge amounts into the club and is no longer looking to be repaid for much of it... that is something that i, for one, give him some credit for as an owner... Will he not be looking for this to repaid in the asking price for the club? Or if not all of it a large chunk of it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa89 Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 the simple fact is that randy has put huge amounts into the club and is no longer looking to be repaid for much of it... that is something that i, for one, give him some credit for as an owner... Will he not be looking for this to repaid in the asking price for the club? Or if not all of it a large chunk of it? I don't think the asking price of the club will equate to the amount of money Randy has lost so far. I would expect that if he does sell the club he will have to take a significant hit which is largely his own fault due to poor decisions. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morley_crosses_to_Withe Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 (edited) As much as i agree with a majority of what he says, to claim credit for his last 'report' being one of the reasons Doug sold up, really? It was 3 and a half years later that Doug sold up, Doug didn't care what anyone thought about the running of the club, their were countless protests between 2003/2006 that you could argue were the catalyst for the clubs sale, but ultimately Doug only sold because he could no longer deal with the day to day running of the club becauseof his health, not because someone who payed a few thousand pounds to sponsor games and brought a box decided to write a report on what was wrong with the club Exactly! That report had bugger all to do with it. It's pure self fellatio to believe otherwise. Actually, maybe I forced him out because of an angry post I once wrote about him on here or by singing a nasty song about him down at VP. That was definitely it. Edited March 5, 2014 by Morley_crosses_to_Withe 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thetrees Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 the simple fact is that randy has put huge amounts into the club and is no longer looking to be repaid for much of it... that is something that i, for one, give him some credit for as an owner... Will he not be looking for this to repaid in the asking price for the club? Or if not all of it a large chunk of it? From all of the signs, I would imagine that he would cut and run for £150m-£200m. Still a big ask in the current climate though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kid_villain Posted March 8, 2014 Share Posted March 8, 2014 I had a nice long chat with Howard Hodgson on 93.5 Unity FM Sports Lounge earlier today. Do take a listen! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodgyknees Posted March 8, 2014 Share Posted March 8, 2014 Glad to see you are doing so well, I remember how nervous you were. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kid_villain Posted March 9, 2014 Share Posted March 9, 2014 Haha been broadcasting for nearly 3 years now since I was 15! Ex-BBC producer has really helped the show and another young presenter called Henry James. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted March 9, 2014 Share Posted March 9, 2014 the simple fact is that randy has put huge amounts into the club and is no longer looking to be repaid for much of it... that is something that i, for one, give him some credit for as an owner... Will he not be looking for this to repaid in the asking price for the club? Or if not all of it a large chunk of it? Exactly. Whether it's debt (owed to himself) or share capital, he's going to want a certain amount of money when he sells the club. If I had £200m and wanted to buy Aston Villa, that's how much I'd be offering. If the club had £150m debts to Lerner, then the owner would only be getting £50m for his share capital. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodgyknees Posted March 9, 2014 Share Posted March 9, 2014 Fantastic :-D great to hear! I must remember to tune in occasionally :-D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rodigan Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 21 minutes of waffle, with no solutions... (no disrespect to the interviewer, who i think did a good job) the thing that frustrates me with something like this, is that it just moans that things aren't as good as we would want them to be... the question to us all is, how do we make it better, and who pays for that? if we were to fire PL and bring in someone new, how much money would we need to give them? how many of the 16 new players would they have to get rid of? what constraints would the new manager be under? who is going to pay for the new funds required? how long will that new manager be given before the fans start to bitch and moan about their performance? if we were to sell the club, who is going to buy it? how much would they be required to pay? how much would they be required to commit on top of that? how hands on are they supposed to be with the club? on what matters should they say yes or no to? will the club be run on a break even or loss-making basis in the future? we'd all like to have 20 points more and to be playing attractive and consistent football - so would the other 11 clubs around us.... however, how you get to that point is a bit more difficult.... my view on it is this - PL, under the constraints set by RL, will get us to a club that sustains its position in the premier league while costing us something close to financial break even.... the majority of the players we have on our books, with the exception of the bomb squad, will have a resale value in excess of their purchase price, or in the worst case, no more than say 3m less.... the days of massive losses on individual players is a thing of the past.... expenditure each summer will be about the smae that it has been each year of RL's tenure, unless players are sold to generate funds.... With a squad effectively in place, future acquisitions will be less in number, more in price and with a view to enhancing our starting XI, as well as one or two keepers to fill in at squaad level.... PL will continue to be backed by RL and the Board, having delivered what his mandate was, which was a mid-table financially sustainable premier league team... the players will continue to back PL, as they have been unanimous in doing so far, and as they reach stability, will start to play with confidence, even at home... we will be in the premiership for many years to come, and hopefully a top half team.... we will not mount a serious challenge for the champions league places, or the title.... if this is right, I sincerely hope that RL stays as our owner and PL as our manager on this basis.... I also sincerely hope that bentekkers stays as our talisman for years to come!!! 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kid_villain Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 You make a very strong point and I can't help but feel such a major change cannot just happen. The only way a change would happen is if fans stopped turning up which I believe would only happen through relegation (at a stretch and we're not going down). However, I can completely understand peoples' frustrations who feel we should be doing far better. I just didn't grow up in the Golden Era. Been watching since David O'Leary! Things will improve only if we start to sign a better quality of players who require higher wages. Perhaps that will happen in the summer. I can understand the lack of confidence in Paul Lambert because of some of the illogical decisions he makes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andykeenan Posted March 11, 2014 Author Share Posted March 11, 2014 Options on Villa future http://avillafan.com/site/11617/options-for-aston-villas-future/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suttonpaul Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 Fair points Rodigan but you miss the FFP point which answers a lot of your questions for you about loss making, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DelboyVilla Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 Bloody hell Faulkner should be asking Howard to do the PR down VP as he seems to have managed to get his self-appreciated report all over the web and now on the airwaves, amazing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
useless Posted April 15, 2014 Share Posted April 15, 2014 I haven't read it but this blog post includes the letter he sent to Randy that people mentioned he should have revealed in the first place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DelboyVilla Posted April 15, 2014 Share Posted April 15, 2014 I haven't read it but this blog post includes the letter he sent to Randy that people mentioned he should have revealed in the first place. Blimey that is truly cringe worthy! HH is now trying to talk tactics to Lerner? The blind leading the blind! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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