$200 Million Takeover

[abdulaziz1]

I don't have anything new, I've just contacted the same source before about two days. He told me KAB will mostly be in England after Ramadan (which ends after about a week). And he'll have some meetings with his lawyers.

 

I didn't want to open this until I'm aware of the outcomes of the meetings, But what made me write here now is something which I want to be sure of.

One of my friends got me a gift (An Away shirt) without me knowing. He told me he was going to put a player name (without me asking him why you didn't put) but they said they won't write names until the club is sold. I failed to understand what the relation with that, and what if the club wasn't sold ? 

So I assumed that either my friend didn't understand exactly what's they're saying? or it's really the case.

If it was the case then they're sure that the club will be sold before the beginning of the season, but again no one seem to be fully sure about being sold in this period exactly.

What I want to ask is, have anyone tried to buy a shirt with a player name and found something like this? Because I haven't read nor heard about this thing at all until yesterday when my friend told me and I wasn't really convinced about his understanding. Maybe they weren't sure if certain players are going to stay with the team or not? But even if this is the case I fail to understand if the shop look in these things.

[AVTuco]

Edit. bad timing.

Edited July 20, 2014 by AVTuco

[Rob182]

Abdul, if the question you're asking, is if people have had problems when asking for a name to be printed on a new Villa shirt? I highly doubt it. The people who print the shirts are just the people who work in the club shops, they wouldn't have any insight on player transfers or takeovers. When someone in England asks for a name to be put on a shirt, there won't be any arguments.

[Vive_La_Villa]

just interested to know?....what is everyone expecting from this new owner when he/she arrives?

I think what the majority expect is the reason a new owner is not going to arrive anytime soon. The task has become too large.

What do you mean? The club is financially self sufficient, in the black perhaps. In the premier league too, second largest catchment area in the country with virtually no realistic competition.

What's the job?

The job is making us a top 6 team again at the very least. This will require a lot of investment in addition to 200M already spent purchasing the club.

The job according to who though? Is that in the advertisement?

Ok maybe I phrased that incorrectly. If somebody would be prepared to spend 200M on a club then they would want to make them competitive and a top half team. That will require further investment and also need the club to increase revenue.

The task is massive!

[Qwpzxjor1]

Abdul, if the question you're asking, is if people have had problems when asking for a name to be printed on a new Villa shirt? I highly doubt it. The people who print the shirts are just the people who work in the club shops, they wouldn't have any insight on player transfers or takeovers. When someone in England asks for a name to be put on a shirt, there won't be any arguments.

The man who sells the popcorn at the cinema can't tell you what it's like to work with Leonardo DiCaprio.

[Daniel]

One thing about the names on the shirt. The club don't print names and numbers untill they have been given their official number by the club. Official numbers are given out next week.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

It's all gone quiet over here.

[limpid]

Please can we keep discussions about the shirt out of this thread and in a more appropriate thread. Thanks.

[GENTLEMAN]

Abdul, who is partnering and backing KAB (if you can say their names on here)? I have also heard from another poster that a group from Saudi (I assume this is KAB) are at an advanced stage of negotiations to buy the club. Fingers crossed.

[jacketspuds]

Sadly Abdul the fact that so many people have come out with cast iron info, you will have to forgive me for wanting to take what you write with a pinch of salt. However, fair play for putting the info out there. It's still better than discussing who is shitter out of Ellis or Lerner.

Edited July 20, 2014 by jacketspuds

[useless]

Didn't someone seem to think that the tour of texas was going to be key? is Anschutz going come out sprinting onto the field of play to declare himself our saviour? I highly doubt it but at least it'll be another theory put to bed if it doesn't happen. It's the Saudi and Chinese links I've got my eyes on.

[GENTLEMAN]

Didn't someone seem to think that the tour of texas was going to be key? is Anschutz going come out sprinting onto the field of play to declare himself our saviour? I highly doubt it but at least it'll be another theory put to bed if it doesn't happen. It's the Saudi and Chinese links I've got my eyes on.

Strangely enough they were talking about visiting the Dallas Cowboys on AVTV. 

[479Villan]

Strangely enough they were talking about visiting the Dallas Cowboys on AVTV.

Jerry Jones would be great for revenue and exposure, bad for player and manager acquisitions: imagine MON owning a club and you've got an idea of his personnel policies.

Not convinced he's aware of soccer beyond the revenues that Latin American countries bring to his stadium to fill it up outside of 10 Sundays a year.

Visiting that stadium is par for the course, it's quite the monument to sport. Hell, it's gigantic and a monument in and of itself.

[McGrath1874]

Didn't someone seem to think that the tour of texas was going to be key? is Anschutz going come out sprinting onto the field of play to declare himself our saviour? I highly doubt it but at least it'll be another theory put to bed if it doesn't happen. It's the Saudi and Chinese links I've got my eyes on.

Who is the Chinese link?

[Raymond]

 

Strangely enough they were talking about visiting the Dallas Cowboys on AVTV.

Jerry Jones would be great for revenue and exposure, bad for player and manager acquisitions: imagine MON owning a club and you've got an idea of his personnel policies.

Not convinced he's aware of soccer beyond the revenues that Latin American countries bring to his stadium to fill it up outside of 10 Sundays a year.

Visiting that stadium is par for the course, it's quite the monument to sport. Hell, it's gigantic and a monument in and of itself.

 

I have been there twice, once on a tour and once to catch a game. I will say anyone traveling to Dallas for the match should make the trip to Arlington to see it. It is pretty spectacular.  

[useless]

 

Didn't someone seem to think that the tour of texas was going to be key? is Anschutz going come out sprinting onto the field of play to declare himself our saviour? I highly doubt it but at least it'll be another theory put to bed if it doesn't happen. It's the Saudi and Chinese links I've got my eyes on.

Who is the Chinese link?

 

 

I don't know if you know who Mysteryman is or not but he used to post here and seemed to be fairly 'ITK' although I'm sure he only got to tell us what the club wanted us to know. Anyway he said on another VIlla forum (H&V) recently that the only interest he was aware of was of a Chinese consortium and that they had the money the only sticking point was that they wanted a six month exclusivity period.

 

That together with some of the Chinese links the club seem to be forging I thought it might be something worth looking out for.

[GENTLEMAN]

Martin Samuel has wrote an excellent article regarding the sale of the club and FFP. I hope Lerner is making notes for his powerpoint presentation to potential investors.   

Each January, the Birmingham Post publishes its rich list. The last one contained 20 names of  Midlands business folk that, by the calculations of its experts, could afford to purchase Aston Villa outright. Yet still, nobody has.

 

Lord Bamford, chairman of JCB, prefers collecting vintage Ferraris. Sir Peter Rigby, founder of what is now Europe’s largest independent IT company, likes to fly helicopters and listen to classical music. Steve Morgan already has his hands full with Wolverhampton Wanderers. These are the breaks.

 

Even so, considering the Premier League broadcasts to a global market, one would think a buyer for the biggest club in Britain’s second city would not be so hard to find.

 

Yet, still, the For Sale sign resides on the unkempt lawn, as it has all summer. As it has since 2010, really, considering that was the year Martin O’Neill, Villa’s manager, walked out, unable to accept the significant shift in transfer policy that was the first indication of changing times.

 

Until that point, the owner, Randy Lerner, had shown great ambition in trying to drag Aston Villa into the elite. O’Neill spent over £80million net, achieving three consecutive sixth-place finishes, but faced with repeating that in a final push for glory, Lerner balked and instead implemented a sell-to-buy regime. This soon became more of a selling regime, by which time O’Neill was long gone.

Lerner was looking to follow almost from that point. Not as openly as now, true, but it has been rumoured for several years that he would be interested if the right buyer at the right price came along. Everton is on the market in a similar way, with Bill Kenwright accepting the financial reality of his stewardship.

 

So, a quick question for Michel Platini and the members of his UEFA brains trust: if Financial Fair Play is the gift to football club owners that you would have us believe, where is the queue of local businessmen  seeking to take advantage of this windfall with Aston Villa? In a matter of months of hard selling the asking price has already dropped by a quarter, to £150m. Yet still nothing. No rich Arabs, no interest from China, tumbleweed blows across America. Most importantly, no Brummies. Not even a sniff from the names on the Birmingham Post rich list, from Pete Waterman to Sir Euan Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe.

 

Towards the end of May, there was a briefly flickering light on the horizon. Tevfik Arif, a Kazakh-born property mogul and business associate of Donald Trump, was announced as a front-runner in the acquisition of Aston Villa. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, who are handling the sale, would not confirm Arif’s involvement, but did not deny it either. He was supposed to be No 1 in a list of six to eight suitors. Arif’s interest in sports business was said to include a share of Doyen  Capital, a London-based hedge fund that has stakes in professional  footballers, including Radamel Falcao. It all seemed to be falling into place. And then, within a week, the following announcement.

 

‘Mr Tevfik Arif has today asked us to make clear that other than being an avid sports fan himself, he: has no experience of running football clubs; has never met Randy Lerner; and  neither he, nor any members of his family, or anyone acting on his behalf has any interest in acquiring Aston Villa Football Club; in addition, he has no involvement in any sports related businesses. We are happy to set out Mr Arif’s position.’

 

Since when, nothing. No more from Arif, silence from the six or so names in that evaporating queue behind him. Lerner must be concerned. Villa are not such a rotten proposition. They have a fine ground, a European pedigree in the pre-Champions League era, a loyal following.

 

Prince William supports them. So does Tom Hanks. They are centrally located in England, next to a major motorway, and easily accessible, and are the first, best- supported club of a major European city. They could be very big.

 

What the average fan might see as irrelevant beside the identity of the manager or the make-up of the first-team squad has value to a buyer. Paul Lambert, Christian Benteke or Ron Vlaar are passing through but a future king on the firm might put your club on the global map. Glamour, history, location, the trivial happenstance of the odd famous fan — these can all be useful selling factors

There is a French pop group called Aston Villa, just as there are English groups called St Etienne or Kaiser Chiefs. Why? It’s a cool name. That’s why Tom Hanks took an interest in it, too. If you’re an American and just getting into soccer, Aston Villa sounds as quintessentially English as the New York Yankees sound evocatively American to us.

 

Don’t laugh. It matters. When Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea, that iconic name and the west London location would have helped clinch the deal. They are marketable factors. It wouldn’t have concerned him greatly that Chelsea had not won the league in half a century — that was a drought he could address with investment. Now, thanks to Financial Fair Play, a new owner is close to helpless. And that is why Lerner can’t sell Aston Villa.

 

Owners exist for many different reasons but one of the most frequently overlooked is the human desire to have fun. Some are motivated by love, some by commerce, but the shared desire is usually still enjoyment.  Kenwright looks like he is in agony watching Everton sometimes, but no doubt the victories taste very good.

 

Sheik Mansour spends very little time at the Etihad Stadium but it is said wherever he is in the world he never misses a Manchester City game and one imagines, at home in Abu Dhabi, when the chaps come round to watch in the air-conditioned cinema room, it’s fun. Even Mike Ashley had pleasure in mind when he bought Newcastle United. What would be the point otherwise?

 

And Chelsea, for Abramovich, was fun, too. He wanted to be part of the passing parade, he wanted to be entertained, to be successful, to have a good day out. And back then, he could. It was an expensive hobby but his commitment to Chelsea has never faltered. Yet what remains for any new owner of Aston Villa? To maintain? To stay up? To exist? Where’s the fun in that? Where’s the bang for the buck? But that wasn’t what the owners demanded, really. They were tired of spending — but scared of losing ground to rivals. So they wanted to stop everyone else spending, too; and being a fool, Platini mistook this for fairness and agreed.

 

This is now the perfect arrangement for Abramovich, but disastrous for Lerner. Buying a football club used to be an ambition for men who sought the challenge of competition, who wished for excitement and did not really care about the cost. Now it is the preserve of the finance department, wholly bound in UEFA’s red tape.

 

Fred Allen, the American radio comedian, wrote an autobiography that seemed to encapsulate the plight of those trapped outside Platini’s elite: Treadmill To Oblivion, he called it.

 

It is hard to see how this will change either, with an exclusive group cemented so tightly in place.

How can Villa get beyond Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and, at a stretch, Tottenham Hotspur if they can only spend what they have already generated? Where’s the thrill? How is Lerner meant to make his club saleable? What dream is he peddling, beyond the heady thrill of accountancy?

 

Click

Edited July 20, 2014 by GENTLEMAN

[useless]

I disagree that the name Aston VIlla sounds quintessentially English. It's more exotic sounding than that.

[Nabby]

Spot on there 

 

FFP has destroyed the league as a competition 

[KSV]

Buying Aston Villa and spending 200-300 million to our playing roster is still cheaper than buying some big clubs. So I wonder why no one wants us still.

Edited July 21, 2014 by KSV