AVST: AGM with Tom Fox Q&A

[DCJonah]

1 hour ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

The books speak for themselves, I'm amazed fans need to ask these questions at all. Without spending the entire AGM boring down into the numbers, what else can they say?

Doesn't sound like he's been demoted to me. He's still CEO, he lead the AGM. 

The mention of £60 million spent in the summer is put out as some sort of defence of the owner and the actions of the club. If they were truly apologetic about their decisions and weren't concerned with putting a positive spin on it they'd mention Benteke, delph, vlaar and Cleverly all leaving and needing to be replaced. But they don't, the fact they assume fans will accept that statement as some sort of defence of the way the clubs been run shows what they think of us. 

[blandy]

6 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

Hasn't he already?

Two weeks ago he was the CEO, he made the decisions, he ran the business - now we've brought in a Chairman who speaks like a CEO and acts like a CEO and has already said he and "the board" will make the decisions and run the business - essentially, he's our de-facto CEO. In a very real sense, Tom Fox has been demoted - I'd have asked him last night if he was ashamed to have had this happen so publicly.

The major flaw with an otherwise good post (even though I don't agree with a fair part of it) is this notion that the CEO (Fox) somehow isn't part of the board. it's utter rubbish. Fox is part of the board. He hasn't been demoted. Though I do agree there's a degree of shadow dancing to be done for the pair of hollis and Fox to work out where the boundaries between their roles lie, in day to day working.

[HanoiVillan]

Again, to be fair, Fox mentioned Benteke and Delph leaving on two occasions during the AGM (maybe he should have mentioned Vlaar and Cleverley as well). 

[DCJonah]

2 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

But aren't both of those things true? or at least close.

They both expanded on the "money doesn't buy success" thing. They didn't say we weren't going to spend. They said they needed to get things right to make sure that when they do spend, it's spent more effectively than it has been previously, and that's what will bring success.

I don't know of a single fan who wouldn't agree that we've wasted a lot of money in recent years (MON years especially)

I don't know the exact figure spent in the summer, but it was certainly around £50m of reported fees from memory. So I don't see what's so outrageous about what he's said there.

They're true but they don't paint the full picture do they? They're statements made to try and convince fans that we were doing good things in the summer. If they were truly open and honest they'd acknowledge the money we received from player sales and the players we lost for nothing. Because when you acknowledge those facts and the position we finished in, its clear our spending in the summer wasn't good enough or acceptable. 

[Stevo985]

1 minute ago, DCJonah said:

They're true but they don't paint the full picture do they? They're statements made to try and convince fans that we were doing good things in the summer. If they were truly open and honest they'd acknowledge the money we received from player sales and the players we lost for nothing. Because when you acknowledge those facts and the position we finished in, its clear our spending in the summer wasn't good enough or acceptable. 

But they did do that.

I'm confused now.

[DCJonah]

1 minute ago, HanoiVillan said:

Again, to be fair, Fox mentioned Benteke and Delph leaving on two occasions during the AGM (maybe he should have mentioned Vlaar and Cleverley as well). 

Did he mention the money we got for them? And the net spend on the squad? Or how that net spend compared to other teams?

[HanoiVillan]

Just now, DCJonah said:

Did he mention the money we got for them? And the net spend on the squad? Or how that net spend compared to other teams?

No, he didn't. The point made was that Randy spent £23m of his own money last summer on the squad rebuild, and that this is unsustainable. I guess we have no way of knowing if that's true or not until the accounts come out. 

[DCJonah]

5 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

But they did do that.

I'm confused now.

I must have missed it then. I didn't see them saying our spending in the summer wasn't good enough and acknowledging our net spend was low. If they did that would change my opinion slightly on that part. 

[DCJonah]

4 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

No, he didn't. The point made was that Randy spent £23m of his own money last summer on the squad rebuild, and that this is unsustainable. I guess we have no way of knowing if that's true or not until the accounts come out. 

Again, making a statement to try and paint the owner in a good light, while we sit bottom of the league. No he's not going to throw Lerner under the bus, but he also doesn't have to throw out his PR thinking us idiots will lap it up. 

[dont_do_it_doug.]

The books speak for themselves, I'm amazed fans need to ask these questions at all. Without spending the entire AGM boring down into the numbers, what else can they say?

Doesn't sound like he's been demoted to me. He's still CEO, he lead the AGM. 

The mention of £60 million spent in the summer is put out as some sort of defence of the owner and the actions of the club. If they were truly apologetic about their decisions and weren't concerned with putting a positive spin on it they'd mention Benteke, delph, vlaar and Cleverly all leaving and needing to be replaced. But they don't, the fact they assume fans will accept that statement as some sort of defence of the way the clubs been run shows what they think of us. 

Benteke and Delph leaving was mentioned several times.

No doubt a little spin was put on their choice of words at times, I'd expect nothing less from extremely high level businessmen. But there was enough honesty there to negate that, in my opinion.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

22 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Again, making a statement to try and paint the owner in a good light, while we sit bottom of the league. No he's not going to throw Lerner under the bus, but he also doesn't have to throw out his PR thinking us idiots will lap it up. 

So how about the long and reasonably detailed statement about how the club has been badly ran for about 10 years now? How much further would you like him to go with it? 

Is it literally just about net spend? Because we already know it hasn't been high enough. 

I think it's a bit childish, this constant obsession some people have with needing to be affirmed. We know what we know, they have been careful with their words but have acknowledged that it hasn't been good enough and that we have been let down. You're not going to get anymore from Tom Fox, he's an employee. He has boundaries he cannot step beyond if he wants to stay in that employment. 

[Kingman]

This will end up like Freddy Shepherd & John Hall mugging off Newcastle fans. 

The quicker Crusty & Coco **** off will be for the better!

Edited January 22, 2016 by Kingman

[briny_ear]

21 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

I think it's a bit childish

With all due respect, how is what you do or don't  think childish relevant to the discussion?

[DCJonah]

36 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

So how about the long and reasonably detailed statement about how the club has been badly ran for about 10 years now? How much further would you like him to go with it? 

Is it literally just about net spend? Because we already know it hasn't been high enough. 

I think it's a bit childish, this constant obsession some people have with needing to be affirmed. We know what we know, they have been careful with their words but have acknowledged that it hasn't been good enough and that we have been let down. You're not going to get anymore from Tom Fox, he's an employee. He has boundaries he cannot step beyond if he wants to stay in that employment. 

I completely get that there's only so much Tom Fox can say. But I don't have to like it. At the end of the day Fox and Hollis are just a mouth piece of the owner, I don't see anything in what they've said that makes me think this club will be good again under the whole leadership we have. 

 

[blandy]

I also share the view that some of the reaction to what the two blokes said is massively OTT.

Also however, while it's good that Fox 'fessed up to mistakes, there's a large part of me that thinks the mistakes owned up to are the reasons, the exact reasons the club is where it is - essentially managerial appointments (before Remi Garde, who I like) and player recruitment policy/integration.

There does/did need to be better commercial focus, a better plan for player recruitment and more consistency in approach throughout the club. It does seem though that they've bungled in going too hard on the structure and aim of recruitment and not taken into account that suddenly bringing in a ton of new, foreign players with no PL experience to replace key players who departed would inevitably lead to issues (poor performance on the pitch). 

Whatever Sherwood's errors and flaws, he was basically compelled to go along with the policy, and was clearly unable to make it work. But I don't think anyone could.

For all the crap over the previous 4 or 5 years, this summer could and should have led to a better team that wouldn't struggle so badly. But they messed up, too keen to bring in all these new plans with no regard for the football implications.

 

[dont_do_it_doug.]

So how about the long and reasonably detailed statement about how the club has been badly ran for about 10 years now? How much further would you like him to go with it? 

Is it literally just about net spend? Because we already know it hasn't been high enough. 

I think it's a bit childish, this constant obsession some people have with needing to be affirmed. We know what we know, they have been careful with their words but have acknowledged that it hasn't been good enough and that we have been let down. You're not going to get anymore from Tom Fox, he's an employee. He has boundaries he cannot step beyond if he wants to stay in that employment. 

I completely get that there's only so much Tom Fox can say. But I don't have to like it. At the end of the day Fox and Hollis are just a mouth piece of the owner, I don't see anything in what they've said that makes me think this club will be good again under the whole leadership we have. 

 

I can understand and respect that opinion, even if I don't agree. Hollis I don't know at all at this stage, Fox though, given his career progression to date, I'm confident would not accept a job where he was knowingly destined to fail and just a "yes man". That would make literally zero logical sense.

So people can argue he's doing a bad job, fine. But I think it's a " false narrative" to say that he doesn't care, isn't trying and is merely a mouthpiece.

He was a CCO at Arsenal FC, the Senior Vice President of Sports Marketing at PepsiCo and a Director of Sports Marketing at Nike. He's not a patsy at Aston Villa, he doesn't need to be. His CV is mind blowing, the attacks on his business acumen and his work ethic are, to be fair, a bit mental.

I'm not saying you are doing specifically that by the way, just as I didn't intend to allude to you being childish as another poster took umbrage with above.

[Richard]

A lot of the fessing up as well is all about managing their own personal reputation,  well for Steve Hollis.  It is a good old consultancy trick so no doubt learned at KPMG.  Go into an organisation say how everything is so appallingly bad and it protects your own reputation and allows for minor improvements to be inflated in importance. Classic

[blandy]

4 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

 there are areas in which they clearly disagree....They differ completely in a key area - recruitment.

According to our Chairman, we wasted £60m in the summer, we spent the money and we're bottom of the table - so therefore, it would be ridiculous to go back to the owner and ask for more money to repeat the mistake - first we need to fix the club, so that when we spend money it works better.

According to our CEO, we bought well in the summer, we've got young players that the manager likes who are contributing to the first team.

Further, he's been clear that the problem was the way we integrated those players - that the strategy of getting lots of new players was aggressive and it hasn't worked out. A lesson has been learned.

The lesson being around getting 27 cheap players with Lambert, not because Lambert loved a long shot, but because Lambert needed a lot of players - the lesson is knowing that in the immediate we need the right players to get us back to a position of stability.

The logical thing to take from Tom Fox's words is that doing it again is exactly the right thing to do. Tailoring it to the Championship maybe necessary , but we need to take corrective action to get a squad that can compete.

...Tom Fox is a very capable public speaker and confident CEO - he's been very clear that he believes the club was finding an even keel and that he'd begun to turn around some of the problems of the past - the summer was part of that, I think he's reasonably pleased with it.

Thus far, Steven Hollis has shown a worrying tendency to put his foot in his mouth when speaking publicly...

These two disagree about where the club is...

That's fair - I take the view, though, that Fox is wrong. Fox's actions IMO have in a major way, contributed to or caused the current league position. Both of them kind of admit this, in their own ways. Fox admitted to errors in appointments he made and admitted integrating all these players hasn't worked (it never would IMO).

It's basically a case of having the right idea of how the club needs to behave, but they've implemented it so fast, that they threw the baby out with the bathwater.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

6 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

 there are areas in which they clearly disagree....They differ completely in a key area - recruitment.

According to our Chairman, we wasted £60m in the summer, we spent the money and we're bottom of the table - so therefore, it would be ridiculous to go back to the owner and ask for more money to repeat the mistake - first we need to fix the club, so that when we spend money it works better.

According to our CEO, we bought well in the summer, we've got young players that the manager likes who are contributing to the first team.

Further, he's been clear that the problem was the way we integrated those players - that the strategy of getting lots of new players was aggressive and it hasn't worked out. A lesson has been learned.

The lesson being around getting 27 cheap players with Lambert, not because Lambert loved a long shot, but because Lambert needed a lot of players - the lesson is knowing that in the immediate we need the right players to get us back to a position of stability.

The logical thing to take from Tom Fox's words is that doing it again is exactly the right thing to do. Tailoring it to the Championship maybe necessary , but we need to take corrective action to get a squad that can compete.

...Tom Fox is a very capable public speaker and confident CEO - he's been very clear that he believes the club was finding an even keel and that he'd begun to turn around some of the problems of the past - the summer was part of that, I think he's reasonably pleased with it.

Thus far, Steven Hollis has shown a worrying tendency to put his foot in his mouth when speaking publicly...

These two disagree about where the club is...

 

That's fair - I take the view, though, that Fox is wrong. Fox's actions IMO have in a major way, contributed to or caused the current league position. Both of them kind of admit this, in their own ways. Fox admitted to errors in appointments he made and admitted integrating all these players hasn't worked (it never would IMO).

It's basically a case of having the right idea of how the club needs to behave, but they've implemented it so fast, that they threw the baby out with the bathwater.

 

Fox isn't wrong though, because he said what you are saying. Though not in such words of course, can't expect the man to stand up there and say "I'm a word removed and I **** it all up". Who would respect him then?

[DCJonah]

24 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

I can understand and respect that opinion, even if I don't agree. Hollis I don't know at all at this stage, Fox though, given his career progression to date, I'm confident would not accept a job where he was knowingly destined to fail and just a "yes man". That would make literally zero logical sense.

So people can argue he's doing a bad job, fine. But I think it's a " false narrative" to say that he doesn't care, isn't trying and is merely a mouthpiece.

He was a CCO at Arsenal FC, the Senior Vice President of Sports Marketing at PepsiCo and a Director of Sports Marketing at Nike. He's not a patsy at Aston Villa, he doesn't need to be. His CV is mind blowing, the attacks on his business acumen and his work ethic are, to be fair, a bit mental.

I'm not saying you are doing specifically that by the way, just as I didn't intend to allude to you being childish as another poster took umbrage with above.

I'm probably being harsh on Fox because of who be works for. Although I do think he's had a negative effect on us so far. 

I believe he does care and I believe he did take the job with intentions to improve us and to make a difference. But I just can't see what he's going to do. And to be fair its not his fault that the club is set up this way, I guess he's just unfortunate at the moment that there's no one else to throw frustrations at. The players get stick but that's at games. There's no Lerner around anymore, Garde has the support of the fans and now fox seems to be the face of the club.