Popular Post chrisp65 Posted May 19, 2016 Popular Post Share Posted May 19, 2016 (edited) 4 hours ago, mjmooney said: I'm not condemning him, but I'm massively uncomfortable with this. I'm as pleased as punch that Lerner has gone. I suspect there must be more than just incompetence to this last sad few years and those bizarre postings on the official website. 'We want our Villa back. We want our Villa back.' Well, that didn't happen. It got sold to a guy we know next to nothing about that may or may not be ridiculously rich and may or may not be an arm of the Chinese state. Either directly, or in a more subtle indirect soft power way. But you don't get to be an international billionaire player based in China, if the Chinese state don't approve of you. I guess if we are morally ok with our underpants and phones coming from China, what's the difference. It's not that different to being owned by an american recluse that puts up a military general as a spokesman and only communicates when the pain killers have kicked in. It might be a good thing or it might be a bad thing, we can't know. I'm more happy than worried right now, but I'm very aware that I personally didn't want to be a supporter of the next Man City or Chelsea. But I also accept that the days of the local owner, the holiday shop entrepreneur are long gone if you want your club live on Sky in HD. We've got non league for all that emotional nourishment stuff. Villa are the marketing and entertainments arm of...well, we don't really know what of yet do we. So I'm chuffed, I'm at the party, but I'm at the back, cautious about the new guy in the waistcoat that may or may not be from Stark Industries and that we know nothing about. I'm really hoping this goes well, but I'm always careful what I wish for. Edited May 19, 2016 by chrisp65 23 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAMAICAN-VILLAN Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 11 minutes ago, KHV said: I'm not liking this takeover one bit. Alarm bells are ringing for me. Some really shitty and dodgy individuals seem to be involved in this. Not good at all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heretic Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 8 minutes ago, Davkaus said: Has there been any mention of the debts we owe Lerner? the club's been sold for £65m-ish, how much do we still owe him? Very likely that the price for the club included Lerner writing off the debt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlwaysAVFC Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 Yeah i think Pat Murphy said yesterday morning before the deal was announced, that all debts to Lerner would be written off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyblade Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 5 hours ago, Richard said: I think the mood is best described as cautiously optimistic . however it is typically villa that it is not clear cut it would be typically villa not to have the best ownership China could offer just waiting to see how this unfolds in the next few months, starting with today . As if we're somehow entitled to the best ownership China could offer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delphinho123 Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 12 minutes ago, jon_c said: With new apparent mega rich owners, are the job losses still going ahead? I hope so. I'd love to see Gabby, Micah, Leandro and Joleon out of a job. Spineless w*******. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeilS Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 (edited) Hope the link works. Sounds like we are a couple of weeks away from a new manager. Edited May 19, 2016 by limpid fixed embed 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delphinho123 Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 It's a real shame that the likes of King, Bernstein and Bevington aren't still here with Dr. Tony as the owner. Regardless of owner, we need to avoid employing charlatans like Reilly and Fox again. Bring football men in who know what it takes to get Villa out of the championship. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KHV Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 6 minutes ago, chrisp65 said: I'm as pleased as punch that Lerner has gone. I suspect there must be more than just incompetence to this last sad few years and those bizarre postings on the official website. 'We want our Villa back. We want our Villa back.' Well, that didn't happen. It got sold to a guy we know next to nothing about that may or may not be ridiculously rich and may or may not be an arm of the Chinese state. Either directly, or in a more subtle indirect soft power way. But you don't get to be an international billionaire player based in China, if the Chinese state don't approve of you. I guess if we are morally ok with our underpants and phones coming from China, what's the difference. It's not that different to being owned by an american recluse that puts up a military general as a spokesman and only communicates when the pain killers have kicked in. It might be a good thing or it might be a bad thing, we can't know. I'm more happy than worried right now, but I'm very aware that I personally didn't want to be a supporter of the next Man City or Chelsea. But I also accept that the days of the local owner, the holiday shop entrepreneur are long gone if you want your club live on Sky in HD. We've got non league for all that emotional nourishment stuff. Villa are the marketing and entertainments arm of...well, we don't really know what of yet do we. So I'm chuffed, I'm at the party, but I'm at the back, cautious about the new guy in the waistcoat that may or may not be from Stark Industries and that we know nothing about. I'm really hoping this goes well, but I'm always careful what I wish for. I'm not sure what to make of the new owner. However the sight of Chris Samuelson at B6 is alarming to say the least. He was part of that deal that almost bankrupted Reading with that Russian bloke and he has been the subject of multiple high profile money laundering investigations. And there was that incident with Everton when he was supposed to buy 29% of the club but the money never materialised or disappeared. Everything he is involved in is extremely shifty indeed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uncle Albert Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 i cant really grasp alot. hope someone can translate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post JAMAICAN-VILLAN Posted May 19, 2016 Popular Post Share Posted May 19, 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/may/19/tony-xia-revamp-aston-villa-top-three-world-owner? Tony Xia hopes revamp will turn Aston Villa into one of top three clubs in world • New owner tells fans ‘forget the past; we are going to enter into a new age’ • ‘Attitude is more important than talent, so that will be my advice to new coach’ Tony Xia confirmed he had held discussions with a number of candidates for managerial position at Aston Villa. Photograph: Damir Sagolj/Reuters Exclusive by Tom Phillips in Beijing Thursday 19 May 201614.14 BST Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+ Shares 0 Save for later The new owner of Aston Villa has vowed to transform the recently relegated clubinto one of the world’s top sides, pumping up to £50m into their coffers before next season and shunning talented but lazy players. Xia Jiantong, a 39-year-old millionaire from east China who uses the English name Tony Xia, was unveiled as Villa’s new owner on Wednesday, one month after the club dropped into the Championship following one of the most disastrous seasons in their 142-year history. Aston Villa agree sale of club to Chinese businessman Dr Tony Xia Read more Speaking on Thursday afternoon at his 19th-floor office in Beijing’s financial district, Xia said he was preparing to embark on an extensive revamp of the club in an effort to secure immediate promotion back to the Premier League. Once that was achieved he would fight to turnAston Villa into a global footballing force. “My ambition is to bring Villa to the top six in less than five years and I hope it can be [one of] the top three in the world – even the best well known in the world – in less than 10 years,” Xia told the Guardian in one of his first face-to-face interviews since the deal was announced. “At least [until] now what I have planned [in my career] everything has been achieved. Nobody believe in the beginning but I made it happen no matter how many years it took.” Asked for his message to Villa fans, Xia said: “Forget the past and think we are going to enter into a new age.” However, Aston Villa’s new chairman admitted his immediate challenge would be fighting a way back to the top flight. “The first priority is to get promoted. I feel a lot of pressure. I think a lot of Villa fans are eager to get back up to the Premiership, so the next one year will be very tough for me. I hope we can do it.” Xia said his main concern was finding the best manager and confirmed he had held discussions with a number of candidates, including the former Chelsea and West Bromwich Albion manager Roberto Di Matteo and the former Southampton and Leicester City manager Nigel Pearson. “We have several very good candidates … I have talked to all of them,” Xia said, adding that the decision would be made in the next two weeks. “The most critical thing now is to get the right manager … [We] need a really good coach who knows how to play in the Championship. It’s even harder than the Premiership. We need to figure out how to reorganise the team.” The incoming manager would be given transfer funds of between £20m and £50m, depending on how many players he believed were needed, Xia said. “For now, I am confident. I think we will add six to seven players in maybe six or seven positions [before the start of the season] and we are going to bring some young talented people from the academy to play in the first squad … I think a lot of them can play very well in the Championship.” The businessman, who returned to China from England this week, said he hoped the devastated Villa fans would look to the future and throw their support behind his plans. He defended the highly unpopular Randy Lerner and said some of the abuse directed at him by fans was “unfair”. Randy Lerner is a nice guy and does have a passion for this club. He really wanted to make the club much better “Actually, he is a nice guy and he does have a passion for this club. He really wanted to make the club much better. He invested a lot of money.” However, in an admission of the toxic relationship that developed between Lerner and fans, the new Villa chairman recognised he would need to build a much better dialogue with fans than his distant predecessor. “Communication will be a very important part,” he said. Having watched Villa’s last home game, against Newcastle United on 7 May, Xia said he planned to become a well-known face at Villa Park and would move to Birmingham with his wife and 18-month-old daughter in an attempt to win over fans and help with the push for promotion. “I am going to spend a lot of time there, especially in the first season,” he said, adding: “I think I will buy a house maybe in the next month.” Xia was born in Quzhou, a mid-sized city about 400km south west of Shanghai, to an agricultural technician father and a housewife mother. “I grew up in a very normal family,” he said – but according to reports in China’s domestic media he was far from a normal child. They describe Xia, who was one of three children, as a child prodigy who left home to study at university in Beijing at the age of 14. Five years later, aged 19, Xia packed his bags and crossed the Pacific to spend six years studying at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also spent five months as an exchange student at Oxford University in 2002, during which time he said he had become a fan of Aston Villa after watching a game at Villa Park. “I’ve been a fan of the English football league for many years,” he said. Asked about his first match at Villa Park, the entrepreneur said: “You know the feeling there. It’s not like excitement, it is like a shock when you are in that environment.” Xia said he made his fortune working on infrastructure projects across a rapidly urbanising China and had taken over Recon Group, the Beijing and Hangzhou-based holding company behind the purchase of Aston Villa, in 2004. Perhaps appropriately for the new owner of a crisis-hit football club, he said the company’s name was an abbreviation of the word “reconstruction”. According to the Financial Times Recon Group has controlling stakes in companies that include a soap maker and a Shanghai-based company that produced 150,000 tonnes of the food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG) last year. That firm reportedly made a net loss of $77.7m last year. In an interview with Sky News, the former Villa midfielder Ian Taylor described Xia’s takeover as “great news” but admitted he was “a bit reserved about the qualifications of the new owner”. FacebookTwitterPinterest Tony Xia says Aston Villa ‘will add six to seven players in maybe six or seven positions’ before the start of next season. Photograph: Damir Sagolj/Reuters Speaking on Thursday, Xia insisted he was the perfect man for the job. He described himself as a hard-working, self-made millionaire who would have little patience with overpaid players who were not pulling their weight. “For a lot of Chinese now, they think the only way you become rich or become successful is because you have grown up in a rich family or you have a whatever daddy – a rich daddy, a powerful daddy or whatever,” he said. “At least from my experience, if you keep working hard you still have a chance … I think attitude is more important than talent. So that is one of the basic principles for me to give advice to the [new] coach to choose players to revamp the team.” Aston Villa’s Randy Lerner says blame for relegation rests solely with him Read more Xia promised to pump significant funds into the club but said he would not attempt to copy what he called the “money-burned” model of teams such as Manchester City. “I don’t think that’s a healthy model and it can’t last long,” he said. Xia said he would return to Birmingham in the next fortnight in order to start the rebuilding process and engage with the fans. “They need to know that I am one of them,” he said. “I will do whatever I can to promote the club. I hope we can bring everything back on to the right track as soon as possible.” The current situation at Aston Villa “could not be worse,” Xia admitted. “So I hope all the Villa fans can really stand up together. I hope after one year we will be happy.” 13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bose Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 Well that sounds **** promising! Going to try and stay calm until we see some action though. But it certainly sounds promising. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villarule123 Posted May 19, 2016 VT Supporter Share Posted May 19, 2016 Omg we're gonna be bigger than Barcelona!!! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam3773 Posted May 19, 2016 Author Share Posted May 19, 2016 Really excited by him. Seems to know the club, a little about the squad and a lot about the previous problems (communication). Especially if he moves his Family to the area! Really hope this is the start of something good. Let the good times roll! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dont_do_it_doug. Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 Seems like a really nice guy. Certainly no Bond villain! Quells some of my misgivings for sure. Welcome Doc! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farlz Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 Villa are going to take over world football, can't wait Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IwishIwasalivein1982 Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 Listening to a Steve Hollis interview Sale price apparently much bigger than the 60mil price tag being reported. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rubberman Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 Sounds good to me. I'm on board the X train. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ccfcman Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 Would I be right in saying that those with non playing roles such as groundsmen, cleaners, tea ladys, shop assistants and so on are more likely to be retained now, rather than if Lerner kept the club. Some nasty rumours of 100+ layoffs being expected a few weeks back. Would be a great news story in terms of local employment if these folks are kept on too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bunnski Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 Well nobody can knock his ambitions that's for sure, biggest team in the world within 10 years haha love it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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