The 2016 Takeover Thread

[dounavilla]

So if recent reports are to be believed

Pearson new manager,

Black to remain as new assistant,

Randy Lerner to remain.

.........

 

[maqroll]

It's all so very light on nourishment

[dudevillaisnice]

Behold John Percy has spoken

 

Damien Comolli is being lined up for a surprise return to English football with Aston Villa.

Comolli has been targeted for the role of technical director by a Chinese consortium bidding to buy the relegated Premier League club from Randy Lerner.

Villa are hoping to name Nigel Pearson as their new manager next month but it is understood that Comolli will be offered a key position if the Chinese bidders succeed in their takeover.

Comolli, 43, has not worked for an English club since leaving Liverpool as director of football in April 2012 but is already undertaking diligence on Villa’s set-up and academy.

Lerner is prepared to sell the club for about £75 million and chairman Steve Hollis is understood to be talking to three parties about a potential sale.

 

Hollis is also working on appointing the next manager and Pearson remains the favourite to take charge as Villa prepare for the Championship.

Pearson has been out of work since leaving Leicester in June and could become Villa’s fourth manager in just over a year if he receives assurances about the club's short-term future and budget.

Meanwhile Stiliyan Petrov, the former club captain, has admitted he wants to play for Villa again after making a full recovery from leukaemia. 

Petrov, 36, is keen to come out of retirement and help Villa achieve promotion from the Championship, with the Bulgarian now back in training.

 

He said: "I have decided to start trying to play football at a higher level again. People will be asking a lot of questions, and will have a lot of doubts.

"I always believe that if you work hard, you will get fitter. My fitness is getting close to when I retired, so let's see where we go. Aston Villa remains my priority."

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/04/26/aston-villa-role-for-damien-comolli-lined-up-by-chinese-consorti/

[Swerbs]

Comolli is another Almstad. 

[sne]

So new Chinese owners, Comolli as technical director, and his choice of manager is Pearson?

Doesn't add up Imo

[Mantis]

3 minutes ago, sne said:

So new Chinese owners, Comolli as technical director, and his choice of manager is Pearson?

Doesn't add up Imo

As I said in the new manager thread, it would actually be more worrying in a way if Pearson is the choice of new owners.

[Pilchard]

Well if there's a man who can make Riley look like he knows what he's doing, then it's Comolli.

[limpid]

Can we keep posts about new managers to the new managers thread please?

[Demitri_C]

The Chinese should get Bernstein and king back in my opinion, if successful

[AshVilla]

Comolli bought some right trash at Liverpool and Spurs

[sne]

1 minute ago, AshVilla said:

Comolli bought some right trash at Liverpool and Spurs

True, but trash would be an upgrade on what we have now.

[Gary Thomas]

1 minute ago, AshVilla said:

Comolli bought some right trash at Liverpool and Spurs

I was just reading an old article in the Guardian about him.  Not very flattering to be honest.  Hoping it's not the Chinese consortium now!

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2012/apr/12/damien-comolli-liverpool-arsene-wenger

Quote

To the staff who saw it at Tottenham Hotspur the CV that Damien Comolli attached to his job application form in 2005 was the subject of considerable mirth – and incredulity. The Frenchman swept into White Hart Lane as replacement for the outgoing sporting director, Frank Arnesen, on the back of a body of work that had supposedly helped to make Arsène Wenger the success story he became at Arsenal. If Wenger would be indebted to players such as Thierry Henry and Robert Pires, then the manager's affection for Comolli, the club's European talent scout from 1996-2003, for ushering the legendary France internationals Wenger's way, together with a glut of other stars, would surely know no bounds. "I let you write what you want about Comolli," Wenger said in November 2010, with scarcely concealed disgust. "He was a scout here and not a director of football. He worked under Steve Rowley [the chief scout]. That is it. Only one person decides who comes in here and that is me. Nobody else." Comolli is never knowingly undersold, although his detractors at Tottenham, St Etienne and Liverpool, from whom he has now parted, would take issue with that on a less figurative level. It is his chutzpah, his ability to sell himself, that has helped propel him to positions of influence in English football. But as he digested his departure from the post of director of football strategy at Anfield, it was possible to see this attribute as having come before a fall – again. The reaction to the news that Comolli would have to polish that CV and ping it around the market once more was polarised. The 39-year-old is a suave, multilingual university graduate, one of those guys who creates a good first impression and, of course, interviews well. He is fundamentally nice, a football-lover and someone with a ferocious dedication to his job. Kenny Dalglish, the Liverpool manager, may not have seen eye-to-eye with him but he could never fault his work ethic. Comolli puts the hours in, regularly spending 12 or 13 in his office, studying matches and DVDs of players. It takes a toll on family life; how can it not? Herein lay the basis for his assertion that he was returning to France for "family reasons". Comolli's friends lamented his failure to succeed at Anfield and they knew it was not for the want of trying. They wondered whether he had been cast as the scapegoat for the collective shortcomings of Dalglish, the technical staff and the squad. Some of Comolli's friends have been made in high places, with Billy Beane, of Moneyball fame and a confidant of Liverpool's principal owner John W Henry, one. Comolli met Beane at a sports industry conference; Beane was impressed and, when the Fenway Sports Group took over at Anfield, he introduced Comolli to Henry. Comolli is adept at working a room, which is pretty important in his vocation. As an aside, Beane's "true hero", according to Arsenal's majority shareholder Stan Kroenke, is Wenger. Comolli, though, has accumulated enemies or at least football people who have nothing good to say about him. They were shedding no tears over his demise at Liverpool. If he is treated with scorn by Wenger and others at Arsenal, then the same became true at Tottenham, where sources say the only discovery he made was the defender Benoît Assou-Ekotto. Comolli likes to point out that on his three-year watch Tottenham signed success stories such as Dimitar Berbatov, Gareth Bale, Luka Modric and Heurelho Gomes, not to mention Assou-Ekotto, although there were plenty of misses, too. His claim, however, that it was he who conceived the capture of Berbatov was one of a number to go down badly. Arnesen had done the legwork on that deal. At Arsenal only Gaël Clichy was a Comolli recommendation. Martin Jol, who was the Tottenham manager when Comolli arrived, clashed with him over signings and Harry Redknapp told the chairman, Daniel Levy, that he would not come to Tottenham in October 2008 if he had to work under a sporting director. The manager caught the mood at the club over Comolli. "Yeah, he should take all the credit, for sure," Redknapp has said, sarcastically. Technical directors have not thrived in English football, where experienced managers such as Wenger, Dalglish and Redknapp demand control over team affairs. The curiosity, as Comolli may reflect post-Liverpool, is what happens when signings fail to justify the outlay and expectations.

 

[AshVilla]

41 minutes ago, dounavilla said:

So if recent reports are to be believed

Pearson new manager,

Black to remain as new assistant,

Randy Lerner to remain.

.........

 

I still expect people to lap the season tickets up in their droves

[sne]

Embarrassed to say I confused Comolli with Cortese at first and got a bit excited 

[Jareth]

Comolli knows his Chinese players - http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/liverpool-fcs-damien-comolli-excited-3363470

[bose]

Hope that Comolli link is bullshit. He's been dreadful everywhere he's been.

[avfcwills10]

6 minutes ago, sne said:

Embarrassed to say I confused Comolli with Cortese at first and got a bit excited 

Also guilty, I went from 'get in' to 'oh shit' in 0.5 seconds 

[Gary Thomas]

A more positive piece about him in The Anfield Wrap.  There is an interview with him as well.

http://www.theanfieldwrap.com/2015/05/time-reassess-damien-comolli/

Quote

STEVE Hothersall recently interviewed Damien Comolli about his time at Liverpool for City Talk 105.9 and it got me thinking about Anfield’s former director of football strategy and later director of football.

I thought about him while watching Luis Suarez for Barcelona. I thought about him when Memphis Depay decided to go to Manchester United after Liverpool’s earlier interest in the player. And I thought about him when Jerome Sinclair made his Premier League debut on Sunday at Stamford Bridge aged 18, with 19-year-old Jordan Ibe joining him on the pitch soon after. All the time I wondered whether it was time to have a look at Comolli’s time at Liverpool again. The Frenchman, who has also worked with Monaco, St Etienne, Arsenal and Spurs, was sacked by FSG just 18 months after being appointed in November 2010. Don’t worry. I’m not going to try to convince you that Andy Carroll was worth £35million, or that Charlie Adam was ever the right fit for the club. But here are the signings most attribute to his hand during his time at the club:

• Andy Carroll: £35m
• Luis Suárez: £22.7m
• Jordan Henderson £20m
• Charlie Adam £8.5m
• Stewart Downing £20m
• Doni: Free
• José Enrique: £7m
• Sebastián Coates: £7m
• Craig Bellamy: Free
• Jordan Ibe: £500k
• Danny Ward: £100k
• Sheyi Ojo: Undisclosed
• Jerome Sinclair: Free

Like at Spurs, his record reads a superstar, a couple of notable successes, some fantastic youth players and plenty who leave you scratching your head. But forget the players for a moment, instead it’s the strategy and implementation during Comolli’s reign that I believe is worth some fresh consideration.  will touch on the Suarez transfer though. It seems Comolli is part of the growing number of people who don’t get any credit for what Luis Suarez did at Liverpool. Earlier in the year, in an attack on Comolli, Ian Doyle of the Liverpool Echo called the Suarez transfer ‘something of a no-brainer’ which seems ridiculously harsh considering every other club in Europe knew about him and didn’t put a bid in. For example, here is Harry Redknapp: “We looked at Suarez. He was a player who we  probably should have taken, looking back on it. We just weren’t sure.” And that was for bloody Tottenham! We’re not talking Real Madrid here. Comolli was part of the team that identified the player as someone who improved us and, crucially, he then got the job done. This is what I want to focus on: Comolli as a man who got shit done. In January 2011, less than three months after joining Liverpool, he managed to negotiate a fee of £50million for a striker who didn’t want to play for Liverpool and bring in two who did. This was during the January transfer window — a time when Liverpool haven’t managed to sign anyone for the last two seasons because apparently it’s impossible. So back then, against all the odds, we managed to lose one of the most highly thought of strikers in Europe and, for a few extra quid, come out better off. And he still found time to sell Ryan Babel, too. There has been plenty written and said about the players brought in during the summer of 2011, but from a director of football point of view it must be said that the club seemed to have a clear strategy and managed to secure most of their first-choice targets.

 

[Jareth]

F*ck it - if Comolli is in the Chinese consortium's plans it means there is some decent money to play with. Very very exciting if you ask me. And if we have to take two or three of China's best players then so be it, the shirt sales will get us around FFP 10 times over.

[Gary Thomas]

1 minute ago, Jareth said:

F*ck it - if Comolli is in the Chinese consortium's plans it means there is some decent money to play with. Very very exciting if you ask me. And if we have to take two or three of China's best players then so be it, the shirt sales will get us around FFP 10 times over.

China's best players vs. Gabby, Zog, Lescott and Bacuna.......decisions, decisions.........