KSV Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 I like Fox. I just think his hands are tied just like all our managers. Randy has cut the spending. We should have spent 20-30 million on top of what we spent this summer and should have bought 7-8 players of real quality. Rather than 13 players for 50 million or whatever it was. Now we will waste more buying old players trying to patch up the holes we left open in the summer. A successful team is a successful team off the field too. Better sponsors.. larger crowds.. more merchandise sold etc etc. Its Randys fault but what is Tom Fox suppose to say about his boss? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted December 17, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted December 17, 2015 7 hours ago, DCJonah said: I'm not dead set against him Your posts would very much suggest otherwise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 4 hours ago, Stevo985 said: Your posts would very much suggest otherwise. My posts are based on the state of the club and the way the clubs changed under him. I could base them on some disney movie fantasy if you want. He's sacked 2 managers in 8 months and overseen a transfer approach which is now going to relegate us with record breaking points. Clearly, its not all down to him or even close to bring his fault but I fail to see the positive signs regarding his appointment. And because of what's gone before I put little credit in what he or anyone running the club says to the fans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ender4 Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 14% non-TV income rise between 2004 and 2014 is awful, that didn't even keep pace with inflation. At least with Tom Fox's commercial background, he will be putting that right, if nothing else. Though how easy it is to increase income when the team is falling apart, i am not so sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 Swansea favourite to get Bielsa as new manager. That was type of manager we should have chased that would lift the club and fans Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 2 hours ago, ender4 said: 14% non-TV income rise between 2004 and 2014 is awful, that didn't even keep pace with inflation. At least with Tom Fox's commercial background, he will be putting that right, if nothing else. Though how easy it is to increase income when the team is falling apart, i am not so sure. That is incredible, especially when FFP came into play. I doubt record breaking relegation is going to do us any favours in changing this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mykeyb Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 I think Sherwoods run as manager was defined by the 2 games in less than 6 days against WBA. Had Foster not had a rush of blood and gave away the penalty we would have gone down and who knows if we would have gone to Wembley? In my opinion I think Fox was very very lucky last season as I dont think you can point to anything Sherwood had done that made you think he could keep us up. As has been said by others we havent seen enough of Garde to say if he is good enough or not and its much harder to judge him considering the mess he has inherited. We dont know how well he is doing on the commercial side because we havent been told how much we have been paid for things like our new shirt sponsorship which I do find to be a little odd as if it was such a good deal why arent the club telling us, they have in the past. I agree that we have only been going in one direction since Lerner turned off the money tap and the owner has to take the majority of the blame for this. The football men he got on the board didnt hang around long and were never replaced which has been a big big mistake. If the new chairman & director are money men and not football people then I think we could be in the Championship for more than 1 or 2 seasons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted December 17, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted December 17, 2015 3 hours ago, DCJonah said: He's sacked 2 managers in 8 months You keep citing this as a negative. You wanted Lambert sacked, you wanted Sherwood appointed, and then when he failed, you wanted Sherwood sacked. So hasn't Fox done exactly what you wanted? What would you rather he did? Kept Lambert? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 (edited) 6 minutes ago, Stevo985 said: You keep citing this as a negative. You wanted Lambert sacked, you wanted Sherwood appointed, and then when he failed, you wanted Sherwood sacked. So hasn't Fox done exactly what you wanted? What would you rather he did? Kept Lambert? Not sure I wanted Sherwood. Out of the options I thought he'd do OK and was happy with it when it happened. But it is a negative. Would you argue it's a positive? What well run club sacks 2 managers in 8 months? If he'd reacted quicker with Lambert, our options may have been better and then maybe we don't end up with a manager we need to sack 11 games into a new season. What's positive about it? And no, overseeing a record breaking relegation isn't what I wanted. What fox has done has played a part in me not attending the last match and probably going to miss a few more. Edited December 17, 2015 by DCJonah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted December 17, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted December 17, 2015 Just now, DCJonah said: Not sure I wanted Sherwood. Out of the options I thought he'd do OK. But it is a negative. Would you argue it's a positive? What well run club sacks 2 managers in 8 months? If he'd reacted quicker with Lambert, our options may have been better and then maybe we don't end up with a manager we need to sack 11 games into a new season. What's positive about it? It's not as positive as if he'd appointed a better manager than Sherwood. But I think you're spinning it by including Lambert's sacking as a negative when you were completely in favour of it. If you were saying "He appointed a manager who only lasted 8 months" then that would be different. But you're trying to make it sound worse by including Lambert's sacking as a negative. I don't particularly think Sherwood's tenure was a positive. But he DID keeps us up last season, and when he proved to be a disaster this season Fox didn't waste much time in getting rid of him. It was Sherwood's disastrous recruitment that got us in this position. Yes that's ultimately down to Fox too as he employed him, but it's not all a negative. We could still be sat on 4 points with Sherwood embarrassing us every week because Fox was too stubborn to sack him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 (edited) We could. Not much difference though. And not sure it's worth much credit. You seem to keep ignoring the point I've made about the timing of Lambert's sacking rather than just the sacking. Not sure why. It's not all negative? The manager he picked lasting less than 30 games. The squad overhaul that he over saw resulting in a record breaking relegation. What's the positives? A new kit deal? A few words to fans to make sure its not his fault? Garde could potentially be a positive but there's really little to bank that on at the moment. Edited December 17, 2015 by DCJonah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted December 17, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted December 17, 2015 (edited) 4 minutes ago, DCJonah said: We could. Not much difference though. And not sure it's worth much credit. You seem to keep ignore the point I've made about the timing of Lambert's sacking rather than just the sacking. Not sure why. I didn't ignore it, it just wasn't relevant to the point I was making. He probably could have sacked Lambert earlier. But I don't think it would have made much difference. he did it early enough to save the season. And appointed a manager who kept us up and got us to a cup final. Like I said, you read what you want to read. I think the damage to this club was done before Fox got here, and it's too early to judge the effect he's had on the club when a lot of his work is in the background, so I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt. You've obviously made your mind up and you don't. It's about interpretation I guess. Edited December 17, 2015 by Stevo985 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 But ultimately that manager has failed and left us in a seriously terrible position. Much worse than any position we were in before Fox teamed up with Lerner. I still think we'd have had better managerial options and more time to find the right man had Lambert gone earlier. It's not a decision that can be ignored when we're in our current state. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevo985 Posted December 17, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted December 17, 2015 Like I said, you've made your mind up. That's fine. I'm not sure I can add any more to the debate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 I've made my mind up about his impact so far, there's really no evidence for me to jump to any other conclusion. We'll see what he can do for us in the future now a new man is coming in. Hopefully a new chairman allows him to focus on the revenue side of things and nothing to do with the football side. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MakemineVanilla Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 20 hours ago, OutByEaster? said: Gents, I posted in this our donors forum on Sunday and thought it best to share with everyone. I got an invite on behalf of VT to meet with Tom Fox this week and was lucky enough to sit down with a small number of fans from websites, Lions club chairmen and representatives of the Aston Villa Supporters trust along with a couple of people from the club and Mr Fox. It was clear that the purpose of the meeting was a little bit of a mystery to each of us as we took advantage of the free coffee and waited for the Chief Exec - but I thought I'd take the opportunity to report back and give you the opportunity to decide for yourselves. Tom (oh yeah, first name terms) spoke at length about the club, how it worked, where we were at and what was being done. He spoke about the mess the club was in due to mistakes that had been made both during the Lerner era and before, about how our revenues increased by just 14% between 2004 and 2014 (not 14% a year, 14% period) and how the club was moving forward to try to get us back into the right areas on revenue. He described us as having found ourselves living in the wrong neighbourhood and how our first target was to get back onto the right street, even if it was in the smallest house. He was also at pains to correct a number of things that appeared in local and national media that are driven by the desire to make a story out of our situation - the most crucial of which is that the way in which we operate our transfer and scouting system is the same as everyone else's - we have scouts, we have people who do data, we have Paddy Reilly and we have the manager. He was very clear that ultimately the manager signs players by a process of recommendation or veto and that our previous manager was in favour of buying every single one of our summer signings and rubber stamped each of them - no matter what has been printed elsewhere. Tom was quite direct about this; he also pointed out that the only quote in any newspaper directly from Tim Sherwood on the subject was in the Evening Mail on the 2nd September when he was clear that the players were his, he'd had the final say and it was up to him to get them playing. He pointed out that Paddy Reilly wasn't sacked by Liverpool, that they had wanted to keep him (he left us initially because he found it difficult to work with one of Paul Lambert's assistants) and that Henrik Almstad isn't directly involved in player recruitment - even though at least one national paper would have you believe that he's our transfer supremo, nor was he brought in over Sherwood's head - he had dinner with Tim at his house before joining and Tim was asked to green or red light the appointment. I've been lucky enough to meet with two previous Villa directors on the old Supporters Consultancy Group (SCG) meetings, and what was noticeably different about this one was that Tom was very happy to talk about football. The SCG's were about supporters and the 'fan experience' and ended up being about wi-fi and better pies. Tom spoke about players, he spoke about how Jordan Ayew is the leader in our dressing room, how Richards and Hutton are the other vocal leaders and how we'd love more leaders in there He spoke about the make up of the current first team and how few of the players signed by Paul Lambert were still here and what the club was learning through the mistakes of having signed 23 players for £47m during that period, just about all of whom had failed both on the pitch and as investments (with the exception of Benteke), he spoke passionately about the Leicester game in a way that would have been right at home in our match thread and he spoke in firm defence of Fabien Delph who changed his mind twice in joining City, not for any sort of negotiating position, but because he genuinely loved it here - and how Delph's agent was more than a little surprised that Delph agreed to sign a new contract with four months left on his old one. He might take abuse from the stands for it, but within the club, that £8m was a gift from a loyal servant. He also spoke about how the club was slightly disappointed in the way in which the management team had initially gone about integrating the summer's recruits. In terms of snippets of news, he confirmed that we'll have a new kit manufacturer to announce in February and he seemed quite pleased about it. More importantly, he confirmed that the club is very close to appointing a new Chairman and will be adding another person to the board. There was no mention of a sale and nothing he said sounded temporary. And that's about it really. we asked a few questions, the club are looking at January and finding the right way forward, he's happier with the coaching staff than he has been, he knows the squad needs a lot of work, they're very aware of what relegation means but they believe that what they're doing now will continue to work in whichever division and that making a huge change in direction at this point would be harmful, and he confirmed that the club is absolutely nowhere near being in profit - we're still living out of the owner's pocket. I think ultimately he'd called us together because of his frustration with the way in which the club is portrayed in the press, especially around Sherwood's departure and he wanted to get his side of the story out to people who care about the club. I'm sure the club recognises the power of social media, but I didn't get the feeling it was a machiavellian plot to turn us into good little club fed news machines. I think he was looking to find a way to speak to fans and hear from fans - I'm not sure if he got exactly what he wanted, but it's a good place to start. There was some talk of establishing a fans council, but at this point that's an idea that's just sitting out there, it came from around the table and Tom was happy to support it, he wants to speak to and listen to supporters - it's something to keep an eye out for, but I don't see it happening in the immediate future. One thing I'll say, in my opinion, he was both honest and open. Too honest at times and I got a definite sense throughout that he had a plan and knew exactly what he wanted to do - he was clearly exasperated at the opportunities we've missed, but he's got passion for the club and I liked him. I'm not sure that's worth a jot, but there you are. One final thing I'd add is that it's difficult in these situations to type up the meeting, the words carry a weight and a slight misuse of a phrase can skew it a great deal - I think I've already done that by saying that the Mail's were the only quotes from Sherwood and I should add that the 14% income increase is outside of TV income - apologies for that. What's worth doing is reading on the reports from the trust and those on other fan websites - a composite is probably useful in this sort of thing - we each miss things and take different things from what we hear. Did anyone record or take minutes of the meeting? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 21 minutes ago, Stevo985 said: I didn't ignore it, it just wasn't relevant to the point I was making. He probably could have sacked Lambert earlier. But I don't think it would have made much difference. he did it early enough to save the season. And appointed a manager who kept us up and got us to a cup final. Like I said, you read what you want to read. I think the damage to this club was done before Fox got here, and it's too early to judge the effect he's had on the club when a lot of his work is in the background, so I tend to give him the benefit of the doubt. You've obviously made your mind up and you don't. It's about interpretation I guess. He could have sacked Lambert earlier and appointed Pulis. That's what we should have done, and I said as much at the time. Then we'd have only sacked one manager and we would be looking forward to Premier League football next season, bottom line. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StefanAVFC Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 On 12/14/2015 at 15:58, PieFacE said: Link to an article about the meeting with Tom Fox More on this link - Villa Trust - Tom Fox Meeting New chairman imminent apparently, not looking good for takeover news. Quote Tom also clarified the role that Hendrik Almstadt plays at the club. There seems to be some confusion in the press as to what his Sporting Director role entails. Tom explained that he has no responsibility for player acquisitions and that he performs a role here that is very similar to that which he did at Arsenal. Essentially, Hendrik is there to manage the logistics of the things that support the playing squad. By way of example, he cited the manager identifying an issue with the medical team. It would then be Hendrik’s job to look into and resolve that issue. Tom was keen to make clear that the manager does not report to the Sporting Director, it is a role that is very much to assist the manager and to allow him to concentrate his focus on playing matters. I trust the stupid shit said by people who make statements before knowing a person's role will retract those now..? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foreveryoung Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 1 hour ago, StefanAVFC said: I trust the stupid shit said by people who make statements before knowing a person's role will retract those now..? Shame he can't resolve the confindence issue within the team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mykeyb Posted December 17, 2015 Share Posted December 17, 2015 Lambert was sacked on the Tuesday night or Wednesday morning from memory an Fox gave an interview on cup final day saying he had interviewed Sherwood for over 20 hours over 4 days. We announced his appointment on the Saturday lunchtime. Doesn't leave a lot of time to interview any other candidate or indeed even see who else was interested. For that reason alone he should be sacked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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