Chris Heck - President of Business Operations

[sidcow]

How many baskets did Heck score for the 76ers? 

Are we certain their coach didn't just hire some good players and make it easy for Heck to grow the brand? 

Edited December 29, 2023 by sidcow

[villa89]

A lot of these people with a "marketing" background are complete spoofers & bullshit artists who couldn't run a cornershop. Hopefully Heck isn't one of those. 

[DaveAV1]

13 hours ago, DakotaVilla said:

Based on the entirety of his time at Villa Park - particular low lights include:

- Lack of transparency and communication with fans re the Terrace View.

- Lack of transparency and communication with fans re the Lower Grounds.

- Lack of transparency and communication with Holte End season ticket holders re access to facilities and having a pig sty of a stand on  the opening day of the season;

- Ticket pricing for Everton league cup game. A full VP and we probably would not have lost that game.

- The abomination that is the AV 150 mark;

- The abomination that is the new crest assuming that the leaked crest is real - made 1000x worse by the fact that it was him who binned the last crest; 

- Lack of communication and transparency with fans re the new crest resulting in a formal complaint to the FA from the FAB;

- Lack of communication and transparency with the fans re the North stand. The club has provided different reasons for the decision in his video and the recent FAB meeting and all smell like BS.

- Lack of urgency in resolving the kit debacle. It was obvious there was an issue in pre season and it took the press interest re the first women’s team game to get the club to start to resolve the matter.

That’s quite a track record developing here and he’s only been here seven months. 

I thought he was pretty clear about wanting to get to know the club and fans before saying anything much. It appears that in here VT his biggest mistake is not being Christian Purslow and in that respect he has a similar problem to Monchi. I’d imagine that isn’t a problem as far as the owners and our Manager is concerned, just the opposite I’d have thought! 

[nick76]

6 minutes ago, DaveAV1 said:

13 hours ago, DakotaVilla said:

Based on the entirety of his time at Villa Park - particular low lights include:

- Lack of transparency and communication with fans re the Terrace View.

- Lack of transparency and communication with fans re the Lower Grounds.

- Lack of transparency and communication with Holte End season ticket holders re access to facilities and having a pig sty of a stand on  the opening day of the season;

- Ticket pricing for Everton league cup game. A full VP and we probably would not have lost that game.

- The abomination that is the AV 150 mark;

- The abomination that is the new crest assuming that the leaked crest is real - made 1000x worse by the fact that it was him who binned the last crest; 

- Lack of communication and transparency with fans re the new crest resulting in a formal complaint to the FA from the FAB;

- Lack of communication and transparency with the fans re the North stand. The club has provided different reasons for the decision in his video and the recent FAB meeting and all smell like BS.

- Lack of urgency in resolving the kit debacle. It was obvious there was an issue in pre season and it took the press interest re the first women’s team game to get the club to start to resolve the matter.

That’s quite a track record developing here and he’s only been here seven months. 

I thought he was pretty clear about wanting to get to know the club and fans before saying anything much. It appears that in here VT his biggest mistake is not being Christian Purslow and in that respect he has a similar problem to Monchi. I’d imagine that isn’t a problem as far as the owners and our Manager is concerned, just the opposite I’d have thought! 

Bit in bold! before saying much he’s done a hell of lot as DakotaVilla outlined.  If one of the parts was to get to know the fans he hasn’t done a good job because he’s doing everything to pee us off.  You say about VT but it’s the wider Villa community if you care to search and talk to people.  Even to the extent the FAB has gone to the FA about one of the parts mentioned above.  I can’t imagine the owners are happy representatives of all the major Villa organisations have gone to FA to complain.

[ender4]

14 minutes ago, DaveAV1 said:

I thought he was pretty clear about wanting to get to know the club and fans before saying anything much. It appears that in here VT his biggest mistake is not being Christian Purslow and in that respect he has a similar problem to Monchi. I’d imagine that isn’t a problem as far as the owners and our Manager is concerned, just the opposite I’d have thought! 

How does he have a similar problem to Monchi?  There is nothing but love for Monchi and he hasn’t yet put a foot wrong as he hasn’t really had a full transfer window. 

[Follyfoot]

If it is so reported, there’s a lot of these corporate tickets end up with away fans in the Holte why the hell have they not been kicked to **** ? would never happen in my day and it would send message to Heck that our traditional home end will not be messed with that’s why no bugger took it.  
 

I remember when they tried to section of the Holte with fences at the start of the 1976 season and able-bodied men brought ratchets and spanners to the game and dismantled it to chants “ of the fence must go” never happened again

[sidcow]

28 minutes ago, Follyfoot said:

If it is so reported, there’s a lot of these corporate tickets end up with away fans in the Holte why the hell have they not been kicked to **** ? would never happen in my day and it would send message to Heck that our traditional home end will not be messed with that’s why no bugger took it.  
 

I remember when they tried to section of the Holte with fences at the start of the 1976 season and able-bodied men brought ratchets and spanners to the game and dismantled it to chants “ of the fence must go” never happened again

Other than the 2 big fences that ran down the middle of The Holte End you mean? 

[david-avfc]

2 hours ago, Captain_Townsend said:

He u-turned on a crest voted on by fans

He put corporate in the holte and was very stubborn (to use your word) about the reaction.

He announced we aren't getting the swanky, shiny new stand we were eagerly anticipating.

The signs, so far, aren't great and I am not sure Irish Catholics are quite so stubborn  that you can make a sweeping statement about them.

I'd be prepared to give Heck some time to bring his own ideas before we start brandishing the knives towards him, he might turn out to be crap but so far most of what he's done is deal with projects initiated by Purslow. Starting with the most obvious, the Terrace View was already announced before he joined the club so it's kind of ridiculous to blame him for adding the corporate section to the holte. The stadium redevelopment presumably has been canned for a reason, my guess is the plans were too ambitious - looks great for the fans but perhaps not worth spending £100m and 2 years on when push came to shove - us fans aren't really in a position to make a judgement on the financial viability of such a project and can only really take the clubs word on it either way. The more subjective one is the new badge - we'll see what he comes up with and that's when we should judge him, but this season's badge IMO was poorly done and it's sole purpose appeared to just be to look like a knock-off of the 1980's badge, which was great for Purslow's popularity but probably doesn't serve the club very well in the long run. 

[sidcow]

3 minutes ago, david-avfc said:

I'd be prepared to give Heck some time to bring his own ideas before we start brandishing the knives towards him, he might turn out to be crap but so far most of what he's done is deal with projects initiated by Purslow. Starting with the most obvious, the Terrace View was already announced before he joined the club so it's kind of ridiculous to blame him for adding the corporate section to the holte. The stadium redevelopment presumably has been canned for a reason, my guess is the plans were too ambitious - looks great for the fans but perhaps not worth spending £100m and 2 years on when push came to shove - us fans aren't really in a position to make a judgement on the financial viability of such a project and can only really take the clubs word on it either way. The more subjective one is the new badge - we'll see what he comes up with and that's when we should judge him, but this season's badge IMO was poorly done and it's sole purpose appeared to just be to look like a knock-off of the 1980's badge, which was great for Purslow's popularity but probably doesn't serve the club very well in the long run. 

You're not seriously suggesting he couldn't have cancelled Terrace View? 

[david-avfc]

1 minute ago, sidcow said:

You're not seriously suggesting he couldn't have cancelled Terrace View? 

He was appointed in mid May and I'm guessing construction started pretty quickly after the season finished so yeah there's probably not much he could have done in practice considering the Terrace View plans would have been finalised months in advance. The blame for the Terrace View 100% lies firmly with Purslow, not the guy who turned up a few days before the builders arrived.

[sidcow]

3 minutes ago, david-avfc said:

He was appointed in mid May and I'm guessing construction started pretty quickly after the season finished so yeah there's probably not much he could have done in practice considering the Terrace View plans would have been finalised months in advance. The blame for the Terrace View 100% lies firmly with Purslow, not the guy who turned up a few days before the builders arrived.

Yeah, OK. 

I look forward to next season when he opens it up to General admission then.  Assume he is also dead set against the changes to The Holte Suite also. 

[Zatman]

3 hours ago, Captain_Townsend said:

He u-turned on a crest voted on by fans

He put corporate in the holte and was very stubborn (to use your word) about the reaction.

He announced we aren't getting the swanky, shiny new stand we were eagerly anticipating.

The signs, so far, aren't great and I am not sure Irish Catholics are quite so stubborn  that you can make a sweeping statement about them.

The Terrace View was before he joined. Was rumoured in April

[Jareth]

I think we've transcended, instead of pinning all our ills on a player,  Heck is now the lightning conductor for the rage. Who gives a heck about Heck? 

[villa4europe]

2 hours ago, Follyfoot said:

Different generations, different ideals. We protected our Holte  end with our lives.

Protected it from what? 

Away fans overpaying to drink shit overpriced Heineken pre game in jeans a collar and a barbour coat? Or do they take an unfair share of the pre game buffet? 

Brave new world 

[villa4europe]

53 minutes ago, Jareth said:

I think we've transcended, instead of pinning all our ills on a player,  Heck is now the lightning conductor for the rage. Who gives a heck about Heck? 

Can't pin anything on Monchi yet and purslow has gone 

[ender4]

3 hours ago, david-avfc said:

The stadium redevelopment presumably has been canned for a reason, my guess is the plans were too ambitious - looks great for the fans but perhaps not worth spending £100m and 2 years on when push came to shove - us fans aren't really in a position to make a judgement on the financial viability of such a project and can only really take the clubs word on it either way. 

1) Don’t blatantly lie about the reason the new North stand was cancelled. 

2) Let’s say the cost has doubled to £200m. It still needs to be done at some point in Aston Villa’s long term future so get it done. In 5 years time the cost will have increased to £300m.  

3) Heck thinks because there are 200 unsold ghost seats, that there isn’t enough demand.  If he actually believes that he’s just an idiot.  
 

So he’s either a total liar or a complete idiot. 

[ender4]

https://archive.nytimes.com/goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/red-bulls-ax-top-executive/
 

Quote

“I don’t think people really comprehend how much damage he’s done in the little time he’s been there,” one team insider said. He added: “He just came off as arrogant and ignorant, and in this business it’s a very bad combination. He was so arrogant, you just couldn’t talk to him. You don’t have to be a 100 percent soccer guy, able to name all the players on Brazil’s 1970 World Cup-winning team, but you have to have a basic understanding of the sport you’re working in. And that was clearly lacking.”

 

[FLVillan]

Have to say this guy doesn't come across well at all and the "explanation" for not doing the stand rebuild is beyond pathetic.  Since the later years of the Ellis tenure rebuilding the North Stand has been a point of much-needed discussion.  His history at NYRB and first six months at Villa aside, I am pinning my trust in Wes and Nas to know what they're doing and done their research on him.  They got it right with Unai and Purslow (Gerrard disaster not included), so I shall keep my powder dry until I see the new badge..... 

[Marka Ragnos]

Find myself unable to give a heck about this thread, despite my best efforts to get outraged about 

3 hours ago, ender4 said:

He just came off as arrogant and ignorant, and in this business it’s a very bad combination.

Uh, no. That's half the ****-ing sport industry. What makes football so sacred? It seems like a very strongly encouraged "combination," actually.

[El Segundo]

4 hours ago, ender4 said:

https://archive.nytimes.com/goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/red-bulls-ax-top-executive/
 

 

Great find and kind of makes his "success" at 76ers look like the exception rathe than the rule.