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AVST: AGM with Tom Fox Q&A


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Thinking about the kind of veiled criticism of our previous commercial decisions

2009/2010, our most successful season in 20 years, if not longer, Europa league, finished 6th, league cup final, FA cup semi final, what was the shirt sponsorship deal Lerner had for us?

£0

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54 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Tom Fox appears to have made generating bigger commercial income a priority, not a surprise given his background.

As for the deals being the biggest ever over the years, assuming that's entirely true, the difference between a big deal for us and a big deal for say Spurs is astonishing. And more so for the real big boys. Manchester United's current shirt deal compared to ours with Macron is terrifying, and the Macron deal is the biggest we've ever had IIRC. Now repeat for every deal the club can do. And bear in mind there's probably deals the fashionable clubs get money from we can barely dream of. It adds up quickly.

No one would have expected us to be getting anything like the kind of sponsorship deals the likes of Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool were/are getting. The chance of doing that had sailed long before Lerner had arrived.

What we had though was an opportunity to get non tv income up to a level to keep up with the likes of Spurs and Everton. We not only failed to do that, and we certainly had the opportunity given the relative success we were having on the pitch between 2007 and 2010, we have also quickly found ourselves falling way behind a number of much smaller clubs.

The horse has already bolted now and we now have the club insulting our intelligence by almost inferring that the failings at the club in terms of income had f all to do with the current owner. More than that though we are now expected to trust that the club will correct a huge error made in not dramatically increasing income when we were establishing ourselves in the top 6 of the top flight, by being able to make huge improvements to our commercial income whilst we are nailed on for relegation and then playing in the Championship. They are either deluded or simply insulting our intelligence.

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So ok then. Somebody put me right.

All i see is people slagging of Fox and Hollis. Yet all the problems the club face have been 4 yrs in the making, and have all accumulated into where we are now. They all happened long before they turned up.

A lot of what they say makes perfect sense to me. These things all need to happen to rectify all the past mistakes.

What am I missing then that Fox has specifically done to generate so much hate?

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Like others have said, its a FOOTBALL club. We go to watch our team play football.

Making a plan for relagation is all good but surely given our recent form, strengthening the team to try and stay up should be a priority.

Even in a commercial business sense, we make more money in the prem than we will in the championship.

Just seems like they have waved the white flag.

All the recent optimism has been killed.

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We have got to give the current management time. The only constant with the errors and lost opportunities of the early Lerner years is Lerner himself and he is looking to leave as soon as he can, everyone else is new. Jeez, give them a break, these things are not going to happen over night, and don't associate performance on the pitch with the success of the commercial side just yet either, they won't correspond for 4-5 years yet.

you can see they are making an effort, we may need to take one step back before we can go forward. For me, the biggest test will be hanging onto talent. These 5 year contracts we dished out in the summer count for nothing if the players walk out like Benteke and Delph - it's the selling and ludicrous wages that's killed this club. But buying a load of second rate talent and journeymen at inflated prices on golden contracts just perpetuates our situation, we need to grin and bear it for a while while we build the team back up.

We just need to hope we don't become a Leeds, Bolton or Portsmouth, then we have chance to build. Premier League football is the no1 priority, the income there is monumental next season and beyond. But to gamble on a long shot at staying up is a fools bet and one that would have repurcussions for many years.  Forget Sunderland, Bournmouth and Newcastle, they are in a much stronger position and the odds on their bet is much more favourable, but some one there is going to catch a cold.

Edited by thunderball
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Had a nightmare at work yesterday so I spent the evening catching up and digesting this. 

First off, I have to say that, despite the occasional complaint that some members on here are being too critical, most of the discussion appears to have been pretty fair. People express their opinions well on here - unlike some other forums.

 

FWIW, Hollis and Fox would be fools to not be preparing for life in the Championship. Fine. There is still a larger problem that this new and, for the moment, talkative regime hasn't put to bed: the club hasn't explained past decisions or outlined a meaningful vision of what we are going to be.

 

The problem is that Fox and Hollis are trying to continue the master narrative that investment is worthless without infrastructure. This is a reaction to Lerner's substantial spending in the first few years of his tenure and a false explanation for what it stopped. Secondly, the responses at the meeting assume that football must somehow lag behind our ability to operate a good human resources team. This is a response to the fact that the players from France didn't bed in as well as hoped. Maybe our team working in that needs help - that doesn't need an entire rethink. 

The responses at the meeting indicate that the official club narrative is now about business and sustaining a corporate culture. Fact is, bad football clubs haemorrhage cash. Ones in the Premier League can rely on the massive tv deals propping them up.

 

We keep getting told that villa is a brilliant brand. The problem is that the processes, that should be behind the scenes, have overtaken the goal: being a football team of which it's fans can be proud. Yes, football teams can and are corporate giants, too - I'm not making out that this is some sell out. The problem arises when the underpinnings overtake the ultimate aim of the organisation. 

I wish they'd stop excusing the past. I want to see them build a footballing culture that has something to it (maybe about style, or community values or local kids from the youth team getting a chance) rather than the mixed approach we have now. It's having a clear and defined goal that has helped the likes of Soithampton and, up to last season, Swansea. Unfortunately, that requires some vision and some money up front. 

Edited by KevinRichardsonsMoustache
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right ,,the £ figures is a worry for me.. we sold delph 8m & cb 32m.. so if fox says randy spent 23m of his own this would say ASTON VILLA has paid more for these players who have sent us to the bottom of the league -fact

 

Or that the club is still making a substantial loss.

(Can't find full quote to see if he specifically references transfers)

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For the ones jumping to the defence of those running the club into relegation and who knows what else. Can I ask what you like about their plans or what they've said regarding what they're going to do to the club? 

I've seen some angry people put across some very valid concerns and worries. And I've seen some people use this as a way to have a go at other fans. 

I haven't really seen why what they've said should be something we should be pleased and patient with. 

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9 minutes ago, jjaacckk91 said:

Or that the club is still making a substantial loss.

(Can't find full quote to see if he specifically references transfers)

The figures no matter how you shift them does not add up, with a cup run to fa cup final etc etc,selling your best players AGAIN, tv money etc ....the big picture is it has not worked,all these bluffed facts on spending 200m & high spending does not wash with me-sorry I just don't buy it, 

the recrutment is the worst in the clubs history,they won't pay the doe which makes villa less desirable ,it's like a huge game of pass the parcel with the blame of the failings over the last 5 years but the parcel is out of paper now &I they carnt pass it to old managers or any one else who was part of the last 5 years

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7 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Thinking about the kind of veiled criticism of our previous commercial decisions

2009/2010, our most successful season in 20 years, if not longer, Europa league, finished 6th, league cup final, FA cup semi final, what was the shirt sponsorship deal Lerner had for us?

£0

Funny how something that was universally popular at the time is now used as a stick to beat Lerner with.

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Results on the pitch drive everything – it is the engine in football.  Every year that goes by the Villa ‘brand’ (forgive me) has been damaged and that has affected our revenue and our ability to attract players. We are now in a death spiral of average team = less revenue = worse players = less revenue = crap team.  The ONLY way to stop this is to fix the results on the pitch, then improve everything else – the academy, the deals, the revenue, the culture.  The problem is Fox and Hollis’s experience is all about the later, that’s what they know, so that is what they focus all their attention on, it makes absolute sense to them. But that is not going to get us out of this mess any time soon. They can spend all the time they want fixing up our battered and neglected car (infrastructure), but without an engine we aint going anywhere but downhill towards that cliff.  Call in the emergency services ffs, get the engine running and drive  us to a place of safety, then fix the car. 

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7 hours ago, DCJonah said:
For the ones jumping to the defence of those running the club into relegation and who knows what else. Can I ask what you like about their plans or what they've said regarding what they're going to do to the club? 

I've seen some angry people put across some very valid concerns and worries. And I've seen some people use this as a way to have a go at other fans. 

I haven't really seen why what they've said should be something we should be pleased and patient with. 

 

The fact that Fox has been in his role for 14 months. If you've worked at any decently large company you'll know organisational change takes longer than that. Combined with his bleep of being an American blagged by the worst manager in our history, and I can see how we arrived here. I'm prepared to give them another 6-12 months to see if they come through on all the rhetoric...

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right ,,the £ figures is a worry for me.. we sold delph 8m & cb 32m.. so if fox says randy spent 23m of his own this would say ASTON VILLA has paid more for these players who have sent us to the bottom of the league -fact

 

When you think Nzogbia ALONE has walked and is still walking away with £25m in wages (disregarding the rest of the bomb squad) you can get an idea of how **** the finances are.

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2 minutes ago, mwj said:

When you think Nzogbia ALONE has walked and is still walking away with £25m in wages (disregarding the rest of the bomb squad) you can get an idea of how **** the finances are.

They cant keep on harping about NZogbia next seaosn as he is gone come summer. i am sick to death of these clowns hiding behind "huge investment" lerners given us. FFS under Lambert we were on a shoe strict budget as with Mcleish. Its just excuses in my opinion not to spend money. they have waved the white flag, loser mentality which reflects on the players

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Did they say 'we will not invest' ? Because that seems to be what people are largely annoyed at. Whereas, what I'm guessing they said was that they won't throw silly money at transfers (including in the January window when prices are inflated).

If that's the case, then January aside, that's no change from what we all knew anyway. Is it?

I am fine with us being financially backed like Everton, for example. A bargain signing, a foreign cheapie, a free transfer, a loan from the Top 4 and a promising youngster, resulting in us selling one of our players the next window for triple the money paid. Perhaps that's the 'not throwing money at it' angle, that they're getting at?

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Everton who spent £24m this summer and around £36m the summer before?

Spending £30m a summer is the Premier league standard - it's being able to do it consistently that's important and getting value when you do - it you increase your revenues and sign young players with future value, you can move in that direction - but you have to spend a lot of money on the right young players or you're wasting it.

Tom Fox said a few weeks back (as a way of illustrating the money that managers have wasted) that Lambert had spent something like £42m on 24 players - that's a lot of money, but inherent in that is that spending £42m on 24 players at this level is like buying lottery tickets - £42m will get you maybe 4 players that actually have the ability to play well in this league, not 24 - and if they're under 25 they'll probably make you a profit at some point too.

I thought we'd learned that lesson - this summer we spent good money on young players that will have an immediate future here and the potential to make us money when they go. It looks like Steve Hollis has decided that's not the case - they way he's talking suggests that this sensible approach (the one that the other successful teams are taking) isn't the one he favours. 

The biggest problem the club has had over Lerner's tenure is a lack of patience, we've lurched from one thing to the next - our loud-quiet-loud manager cycle, the turnover of new brooms who are going to fix everything. This year we're seeing the result of that over a number of years - but I actually think that last summer might have been the best we've had in a long time in terms of the transfers we've made - it looks like we're going to dump the policy that was working as a reaction to the results - where for me the results are much more a reflection of the fact that we keep shaking things up and shaking things up and shaking things up and nothing ever gets a chance to work.

 

 

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