dukes Posted December 2, 2016 Share Posted December 2, 2016 8 hours ago, villarocker said: If Dr Tony's reign forever stays this way, wow, a better owner we could not wish for. Are you a greetings card writer ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
handsworthlion Posted December 2, 2016 Share Posted December 2, 2016 'Dr Tony's having a party' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRO Posted December 2, 2016 Share Posted December 2, 2016 I wonder if he really realises how happy he has made so many people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoof hearted Posted December 2, 2016 Share Posted December 2, 2016 On 28/11/2016 at 19:07, Villan_of_oz said: How can any one fault the good Dr when he celebrates like that.... woulda been cool to see his reaction to the cardiff goal 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Barney_avfc Posted December 2, 2016 Popular Post Share Posted December 2, 2016 11 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post bannedfromHandV Posted December 2, 2016 Popular Post Share Posted December 2, 2016 (edited) There's only one thing I love more than Tony Xia, and that's Indian food. He now officially ranks higher than my girlfriend, my dog and my PS4. If he overtakes Indian food in my rankings then I may actually explode on the spot. Edited December 2, 2016 by bannedfromHandV 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trekka Posted December 2, 2016 VT Supporter Share Posted December 2, 2016 (edited) 2 hours ago, Barney_avfc said: If only I could give more likes! Edited December 2, 2016 by trekka Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharkyvilla Posted December 2, 2016 Share Posted December 2, 2016 Exciting to hear he's met with the council about redevelopment of the Villa Park area and investing in Birmingham already. His attitude in general has been first class since coming. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikeyp102 Posted December 2, 2016 Share Posted December 2, 2016 No doubt in my mind he will be an excellent owner for us. You can see why he has made so much money by his business acumen, he is obviously ambitious for the club and is going to take us in the right direction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcow Posted December 2, 2016 VT Supporter Share Posted December 2, 2016 (edited) Oh my lord, just how different from Lerner can one man be? Can you imagine Randy making a film like that? He's certainly not afraid to put himself forward. You can see his English is still not top draw yet so it takes some balls to go out of your way and be interviewed and filmed a lot. He must have huge self confidence. I am really starting to believe he is the real deal now in terms of his resources. He keeps talking to the council and talking about investing in Birmingham. If he was a fraud he would surely keep quite about that. The issue is that China is so opaque compared to The West we expect anyone seriously wealthy to have a ton of info in the Public Domain. If he really has carried out all of the enormous developments in China he is credited with he could do something really special here. Exciting times. I love the way there is continual communication with more bits and bob's leaking out all the time. Edited December 2, 2016 by sidcow 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post blandy Posted December 2, 2016 Moderator Popular Post Share Posted December 2, 2016 1 minute ago, sidcow said: Oh my lord, just how different from Lerner can one man be? Can you imagine Randy making a film like that? He's certainly not afraid to put himself forward. You can see his English is still not top draw yet so it takes some balls to go out of your way and be interviewed and filmed a lot. He must have huge self confidence. I am really starting to believe he is the real deal now in terms of his resources. He's keeps talking to the council and talking about investing in Birmingham. If he was a fraud he would surely keep quite about that. The issue is that China is so opaque compared to The West we expect anyone seriously wealthy to have a ton of info in the Public Domain. If he really has carried out all of the enormous developments in China he is credited with he could do something really special here. Exciting times. I love the way there is continual communication with more bits and bob's leaking out all the time. He's the complete opposite in personality, but I think to be fair for the first few years of Randy Lerner we were chuffed to bits with him, too. He had plans and money and made changes and turned the club round and was incredibly popular. Obviously once circumstances changed, our collective view of him changed, too. But you're right of course, the communication and enthusiasm is really encouraging and refreshing. At the moment we don't know any details of any plans, we don't know much about his businesses, his wealth and all the rest of it. The biggest single thing he's done by a mile that re-assures me is that unlike Randy and unlike Ellis he's appointed people who really know what they're doing and is letting them get on with it. Everything else is a bonus, really. I hope in time we get to see more of what he actually plans for the club and the area. 11 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grasshopper Posted December 2, 2016 Share Posted December 2, 2016 who sponsored the PURPLE glasses? F******* Cadbury's? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaChris Posted December 2, 2016 Share Posted December 2, 2016 On 01/12/2016 at 22:54, villarocker said: If Dr Tony's reign forever stays this way, wow, a better owner we could not wish for. He's been great so far but if you went back to December 2006 most of us were saying the same things about Randy....e.g. free coaches to Chelsea cup tie, inviting Ron Saunders back to VP and signing Carew and Young were all things he did first 6 months of his ownership. Let's see what Dr Tony is like if a popular manager walks out at a strange time like MON did or we have some frustrating seasons. This sort of stuff meant Lerner lost interest....I don't think Tony Xia will be like that as he has plans off the pitch aswell but still interested what his temperament will be if we miss out on promotion this season, 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AVTuco Posted December 3, 2016 VT Supporter Share Posted December 3, 2016 10 hours ago, Grasshopper said: who sponsored the PURPLE glasses? F******* Cadbury's? I like 'em. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dudevillaisnice Posted December 3, 2016 Share Posted December 3, 2016 Probably been mentioned but interesting to see Yanfang Gu listed as a director, the chairman of state owned Shanghai Smartech Group. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post blandy Posted December 3, 2016 Moderator Popular Post Share Posted December 3, 2016 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/ill-make-world-a-better-place-with-my-ability-3t7w22vd2 Quote ‘I’ll make world a better place with my ability’ Aston Villa’s Chinese owner Tony Xia tells Henry Winter that he has big plans for his club and says he has been surprised by the openness of Steve Bruce Henry Winter, Chief Football Writer Xia has been depicted by some as a stooge of the Chinese government or a Bond villain-type but the image he displays to Villa fans is more friendly When Aston Villa’s owner, Dr Tony Xia, addressed the World Robot Conference in Beijing in October, he was inundated with tweets from Villa fans asking everything from “any chance they can build us a decent right back” to “are we re-signing Peter Crouch?” Villa supporters are fascinated by Xia. Many in football are curious about the little-known Chinese businessman who now controls one of the founding fathers of the Football League. Xia engages readily with fans via social media but since buying Randy Lerner out for £76 million, he has largely avoided interviews. So his image has gained layer after layer: Xia has been depicted as everything from a saviour of the Holte End to a stooge for the Chinese government, from a Bond villain to the Harvard-educated hero who sailed through the Football League owners’ and directors’ test. In six years we can be top of the Premier League so we can be in Champions League But who is Tony Xia? He’s certainly different from Lerner, let alone Doug Ellis. The situation is confusion meets Confucius. Xia is a ferociously intelligent best-selling author who reads Jane Austen and has inserted two safe-standing areas in new plans for the Holte End. He says that Villa were “a mess” when he bought them, that Steve Bruce “is better than I expected” and wants to turn the 11th-best team in the Championship into Champions League winners “in ten years”. Villa fans don’t think he’s crazy. “On a scale of one to Cellino, you’re about a four, Tony,” one supporter reassured him. Xia’s club travel to Massimo Cellino’s Leeds United today. English football is a broad church, especially at board level. Chinese expansion has been particularly felt in the West Midlands with Trillion Trophy Asia taking over Birmingham City, Guochuan Lai buying West Bromwich Albion, Jeff Shi fronting the conglomerate owning Wolverhampton Wanderers while Xia has Villa. Meeting Xia is a two-fold process, first a ten-minute private chat in the Bodymoor Heath canteen followed a week later by an interview in the boardroom at the training ground where all the photographs have been taken down. He does not have to look far for local heroes, having just spent two hours watching training in the company of Peter Withe and Brian Little. He seems surprised at any suspicions. “Chinese people are very friendly,” Xia says. “It’s from our very long history of philosophy, they want to make harmony with the world. From Confucius they start to implement that conception of harmony.” Xia insists the Western perception of Beijing being closed and suspicious of the outside world is outdated. “For now, the Chinese government has changed a lot, they are now not considered enemies. They do not have very strong suspicions to other parts of the world. They start to change their minds and learn how to understand others, not only with the US, but UK and other countries. There’s really no big barrier between East and West now.” So, really, who is this Beijing-based, Villa-backing citizen of the world? Xia patiently explains. His family history seems partly to reflect China in the 20th century, including the grip of Communism when Mao Zedong proclaimed the People’s Republic of China in 1949. “Before ’49 we were a very wealthy family. My grandfather’s father used to be a minister for the Kuomintang party, which went to Taiwan [in 1949 after defeat in the Chinese Civil War to Mao]. It was not good for our family to stay in mainland China because of the political situation, but we couldn’t move.” They stayed and suffered. “Our life was affected a lot, not only economically. My father was not allowed to go to college because of the political background, even though he was admitted to university. He couldn’t take some jobs. He lost opportunity. It was very difficult. For the Cultural Revolution era, you can compare with North Korea now.” Deng Xiaoping brought in economic reforms and things began to improve for families like Xia’s, increasing when Deng stepped down in 1989. “After Deng Xiaoping came off the stage, some families like ours who had difficult times in the Cultural Revolution era were allowed to get equal opportunity again to go to school and have jobs. My father was free to do something. He started to do some business but it was very minor business for him, just so he can afford for us to go to school. My family taught me that the only way to go through hard times was to study hard. “The difficulties that our family faced taught me a lot, like you have to work hard.” He still managed to fit in football training and playing as a striker while studying in Beijing. “We had a college league for all the universities in Beijing, close to semi-professional level.” Harvard beckoned where he studied design and landscape architecture. “A dramatic change for China was that starting from the early Nineties, a lot of people like me went abroad to study. A lot of those students went back to China either to do business or to teach at university or college. Those people are changing the country a lot. “Harvard opened up a broader view of the world for me. I got the chance to access all kinds of knowledge. Harvard has more than 100 libraries! I got a chance to meet people from all over the world, from different fields and that made me understand the world better.” He spent five months at the University of Oxford in 1999. “There are a lot of similarities between Oxford and Harvard, actually, but Oxford is much more historic. It’s more like the difference between America and the UK. America is much more open and ‘pop’. But here it’s more Classical and more disciplined in parts.” It was not all work amid the dreaming spires. He headed up the motorway to catch John Gregory’s team in action. “I watched one game at Villa when I was at Oxford — against Liverpool.” Xia returned to China and continued building his business, The Recon Group, which is involved in everything from monosodium glutamate to small loans. When his wealth was recently estimated at £550 million, he laughed it off, tweeting “those rich-list ranking stuffs never get even close to ‘correct’.” Yet he sees fit to mention when he has landed a large deal for Recon, as if to show he’s not a “pauper”. So does he consider himself a capitalist? “Honestly, I never understand the term ‘capitalist’ and in mainland China there’s ‘communist’. The driving force for me to do some business came from my childhood experiences and from my education, not only at Harvard but also in China. When I was in China, from elementary school to college, I was trying to learn so that one day I can make some changes in society for the country. When I completed my studies at Harvard, I started to learn that maybe I can not only do something for my country but do something to make the world a much better place with my ability. At Harvard, I was trained to be a person who can be valuable to the world.” And valuable to Villa? What was the attraction? “It’s much more difficult to buy Arsenal or Liverpool,” he explains. He could also see the potential of a fallen giant, a 142-year-old club who have won the title seven times, the FA Cup seven times and the European Cup with that goal from Withe in 1982. “I’m absolutely aware of the heritage,” Xia adds. “That’s another big reason for us to consider Aston Villa, the long history, the large fanbase that maybe was broken somehow for some years. We have time to recover and take it back to being a great club again. “Honestly, the first part [of his interest in Villa] comes from my passion for the sport. The second is the business part. When we bought Villa, it was a total mess. We are talking about the management system through the club. It was even much worse than I expected when I took over. “We have bought a lot of similar businesses, some companies in crisis, and we had to fix them. That’s the value we can give.” Fixing problems. Roberto Di Matteo was appointed in June, partly, it seems because Xia respected his academic qualifications including attending an MBA course. He lasted until early October and the more experienced Bruce came in. “He’s much better than I expected,” Xia says of Bruce. “I didn’t expect him to be so open to learn a lot of new things. Honestly, a lot of people said he was quite good as a manager to get out of the Championship, and go back to the Premier League — and that was the first priority and we didn’t expect much more. But now I think he is much more open, and learning. Now I’m very confident and quite comfortable not only just Steve, but Keith [Wyness, chief executive] and Steve Round [technical director]. I like the whole team. “Everyone knows we have to build everything step by step. We plan to go back to the Premier League in one year, at most two years, stay [consolidate] for one or two years and we hope in five or six years we can be the top club in the Premier League so we can play in Champions League and then two or three more years we can challenge to go top of Europe. I’m very confident for that. “I foresee modern football changing very quickly. The club that is top now won’t stay there for many years if they don’t push to fit into the changes that are happening. Football will be dramatically changed by the implementation of more data technology, internet, communication technology, and one day, maybe also, bio-science, bio-technology. Even a club like Man United now, if you don’t start to make a lot of changes will very soon be left behind.” Football is changing already, especially with the areas around grounds being turned into fan-friendly areas as at Anfield and the Etihad. Xia has similar plans for Villa Park, mixing business enterprise and theme park. “My conception for the redevelopment of the Villa Park area is not just the stadium itself,” Xia continues. “We are going to redevelop the whole area, so we can combine with all kinds of stores, specialising in sport, and some entertainment location experience. “Maybe we will build some tourism destination to demonstrate the history of Villa as the first club to [help] found the [Football] League. We can bring not only Villa fans from all over the world but tourists from China, India and other countries to visit. That’s the large plans we take to Birmingham city council. It’s exciting. I pretty much agree we can insert some safe standing. We might add two standing areas in-between a seating area. That would be interesting.” Having transformed Villa Park, would he sell? “No, no, no,” Xia insists. He enjoys watching Villa, meeting supporters, relaxing. “Honestly for the past five years I’ve been working too much. I’m not young any more. I realise I can’t work like I studied at Harvard, when I worked 18 hours every day, so for now, sometimes I take one day off to sleep on the beach, just make peace. My daughter was born two years ago and she’s made me more relaxed.” He also relaxes by reading. “I was a best-selling writer 11 years ago. I had two books published as best-sellers in Chinese. I’m very much into literature and philosophy. From the traditional Chinese literature, my favourite would be Cao Xueqin.” Cao’s book Dream of the Red Chamber is considered one of the four great books of Chinese literature but he also loves one English author in particular, Jane Austen. “I went to Bath city for The Three Sisters! Jane Austen!” Xia has yet to read any of Steve Bruce’s three novels, but the engaging, slightly mysterious Dr Xia has certainly become embedded in English footballing life. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcow Posted December 3, 2016 VT Supporter Share Posted December 3, 2016 (edited) 1 hour ago, blandy said: Villa fans don’t think he’s crazy. “On a scale of one to Cellino, you’re about a four, Tony,” one supporter reassured him. Xia’s club travel to Massimo Cellino’s Leeds United today. I would put him more as 6 than 4. He is delightfully slightly bonkers. Edited December 3, 2016 by sidcow Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodgyknees Posted December 3, 2016 Share Posted December 3, 2016 Quote “I foresee modern football changing very quickly. The club that is top now won’t stay there for many years if they don’t push to fit into the changes that are happening. Football will be dramatically changed by the implementation of more data technology, internet, communication technology, and one day, maybe also, bio-science, bio-technology. Even a club like Man United now, if you don’t start to make a lot of changes will very soon be left behind.” Just what Villa need. A visionary. We've been stuck in the past for too long as others overtake us. Actually, if I remember, weren't we the first club to utilise a formation in a match, some 100 years ago? We used to be the go-gettters, the ones with vision - but we sat back and looked back far too often. Hopefully Xia is the man to look to the future. Really good interview and I hope he is true to his word. Actions will certainly speak louder than words over the next five years. Fingers crossed. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PompeyVillan Posted December 3, 2016 Share Posted December 3, 2016 Do you think Alex Ferguson, Messi or Maradona ever said, 'you know what, I'll be happy being average'? I don't don't so. Yes it does sound bonckers but without that vision and determination it'll never happen. As long as we improve I'm happy and Xia has at the very least breathed a bit of life into the Villa for now. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lichfield Dean Posted December 3, 2016 VT Supporter Share Posted December 3, 2016 "Maybe we will build some tourism destination to demonstrate the history of Villa as the first club to [help] found the [Football] League" Sounds good! I have been arguing that this would be a great tourist attraction for Birmingham for ages. (Although I don't see why they needed to insert the word 'help' really, it was Villa that found the league) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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