General Krulak (No Transfer Questions allowed)

[Ginge]

Perhaps bringing in an outside auditing company to try and implement new

strategies is whats needed? Rather than relying on VP management who obviously

dont seem to be able to handle the issue they are facing currently?

Thanks

The club did bring in consultants for several areas of the ground, cost a fortune and only changed things for the worse. Getting rid of the staff with experience is not always a good thing as i have been saying for well over a year now. Zero complaints is what Villa told me they strive to achieve seems like its failing miserably and they are only a game in.

[villab0y]

General,

Although I wasn't able to attend the game yesterday, my brother did.

He told me of many incidents that worried me, if I'm honest.

The most concearning thing he saw, was 2 Liverpool fans trying to enter the North Stand Upper wearing Liverpool shirts, the stewards asked them to remove the tops and gave them a ticket to retrieve them after the game.

In my opinion ths is disgraceful actions.

I will be attending the remaining home games with my 5yr old son, and i'm now worried that he will wittness such events.

I hope you can understand how serious this problem is.

VB

[Phoenicks]

General

Some more feedback on yesterday, and more problems I'm afraid. I won't bother going on about the lack of investment in the playing staff as I know this is not your domain.

The catering was once again atrocious, possibly worse than last week. The staff are rude and unhelpful. Hot dogs had run out before the game, and one type of pie left. They also ran out of water by half-time on a baking hot day. Have they no idea of the level of demand required? As they know exactly how many seats they are catering for, stock ordering can't be this difficult can it?

There was a Liverpool fan sat next to me who celebrated both of their goals. When the lads in front realised, there was very nearly a fight. Suffice to say he left quickly when he realised he was about to get his teeth kicked in, and got away with only being covered in saliva. Not something I condone, but this will happen if opposing fans are allowed in with home fans.

Finally, why on earth is our kit the most expensive in the premiership?

It is the first time I have said it (as i don't want to even contemplate it), but many, many Villa fans are starting to wonder if our brave new dawn might be another false one.

[OutByEaster?]

On a more positive note , are you aware that Saturday's crowd was the largest at Villa Park for 13 years?

Also I've read on another site that we may have now broken the season ticket sales record, can you confirm the current number please?

Thank you,

OBE

[bosser_in_the_suit]

hey General, long time lurker on here and season ticket holder- really good to know we have a member of the board on here to address any praise and concerns to!

First of all, was really great to see a packed Villa Park yesterday and some of the cosmetic changes to the ground, from the new advertising boards to the updated signs/badge on the stands. Thanks for all the positive developments.

A couple of minor gripes/feedback points- re: the food at the ground, as others have already said, there were issues with food quality and the menu's not being updated as well as new staff either not speaking English well/not giving the sort of speedy quality service we'd expect. Admittedly it was a full house and the start of the season so a big test but after seeing the problems at the Inter Milan game the week before I was hoping things may have improved for the Liverpool game but have to say having had a real battle to get my server to understand what a chip butty was, and getting similar feedback from others in the Trinity Lower, it seems things didn't improve significantly.

The other thing was there was a very long queue to get into the Holte Suite from 2 hours before kick off, with no real organisation of the queue so it was stretching back almost to the road and people were getting in the way of cars etc. The length of the queue was largely due to there being only one till/entry point at the front of the holte suite and the guys on the door made a point of saying they were sorry and that there should be two tills/more people on the door to get people in but whenever they had fed this back that to the club management they apparently weren't interested and the same problem keeps being allowed to recur. The bar was pretty slow too when we finally got in due to new staff etc so the club probably missed out on a fair bit of business from people who gave up waiting to get in/left early.

Anyhow don't want to get it out of proportion and am sure the club will get it right eventually just thought the feedback may be useful. Thanks again!

Steve

[terrytini]

On matchday, this road is often made one-way, and the police at the top of Aston Hall Road give priority over the traffic lights to allow cars speedy exit away from the ground

Hello General and best wishes for all thats going on at the Villa.

I'd like to echo this comment about the lack of police. It has happened a couple of times recently. With the police at the junction I can leave the ground 5 minutes after the end, and by at the Motorway in another 10 minutes. Yesterday was nearly an hour, and as I say there's been others, In fact we only got out yesterday because 2 supporters took it on themselves to divert the trafic. Why no police ?

Second question - for years my son and I get in the upper Holte at between 1pm and 1.30pm, making a day of it (something I recall you were interested in expanding). But on Saturday we had to wait till one and a quarter hours till kick off - this is also something that has been happening a lot more recently. Any reason ? The earlier the better. (Oh, and do they have to chuck us out the ground so quick ? - I'd rather stay behind and have a cup of tea and watch a bit of Sky ?)

All the best

[regular_john]

Hello General, once again a massive congratulations at the job being done at Villa Park, chuffed to bits on saturday by the positive atmosphere even in the face of defeat. Two quick moans though...

1. Not sure if this is outside your remit but the new Villa store on New Street is absolute chaos, went in on saturday (granted it was the start of the season so was very busy) - took me over half an hour to get to the till, one of them crashed so there were several queues with people jumping between each, total chaos. Also no dressing rooms?!

2. Hopefully this isn't an inappropriate post but pass on a message to Gareth Barry on behalf of the villa faithful - cut out the diving. I have too much respect for Barry to see him take a dive, no matter how much we might need a decision to go our way, unfortunately it's part of todays game but one thing i love about being a Villan is the lack of cheating tactics we seem to employ as a team. I have seen better players than Barry lose fan respect for diving, Henry for instance. Barry is too good to cheat, Villa are too good to cheat, leave that up to the Italians.

Rant over, other than that i am loving being a villain, let's get a couple more signings in and show the world what we can do! UTV!! MITM!!

[avfc443]

General,

I feel quite bad for complaining when you have all this lot to read, but I feel it needs to be said.

I was sat in the Lower Holte yesterday (I'd moved my season ticket seat for that one game to sit next to my girlfriend) and after a while it became clear that I was sat amongst many Liverpool fans. The 3 people to the left of me were Liverpool, as were the two to the right of the my girlfriend and so were the 2 behind me. These seats could have been occupied by villa fans, instead hostilities arose and things got very messy. There were young children around who should feel safe at their home ground from being made to feel intimidated.

I know theres not much to be done about it, but the two behind me were defiantely with a villa fan- if he was a season ticket holder, I hope he was warned about not bringing away fans to home areas. People that do this cause fighting at matches and give the club a bad name.

On a lighter note, my season card worked great even though it was moved to another area of the ground and the stadium looked great- you've done a great job with the place.

Thanks, Matt.

[bully]

General,

Can I make a couple of suggestions with regard to the issue of away fans in home areas.

1. They should be removed from the ground immediately, there are plenty of notices stating that these areas are for home fans only.

2. Trace their details from their seat numbers and if a ST holder has bought those tickets take appropriate action against the ST holder to prevent further misuse. It will certainly make them think twice about buying tickets for away 'mates' again.

[Mattjstrong]

Hi general,

Can I just say that I think that the re-brand of the club was excellent an the new signs etc look fantastic, however I did notice that the stewards had bibs with the old badge on which is a little disappointing.

Also I was a little concerned with the number of liverpool fans in the villa ends, they were fairly obvious but the stewards didn't seem to do anything about it.

Finally the catering was atrocious, the express queues were in no way express, and the staff didn't exactly seem organised, when we ordered a drink they had to walk all they way to the othere end of the counter to pick it up. Surely there are better ways of doing this.

[b6bloke]

On Away fans They should be evicted from the ground but at a very minimum we should be seen to be doing something about this. When we play Blues it will be much worse due to the fact of them having more of a loacal support that liverpool have. This could be a powder keg about to explode and if the club could be in trouble as even from comments made on this site alone the risk has been highlighted.

May suggest stewards take a note of seat numbers containing away fans and trace who brought the ticket for them. At a minimum a written warning could be sent out and this would serve as not only a warning to them but a warning to all fans what is at risk by buying tickets for aways fans.

Football violence at grounds must not show its ugly head again as our families are at risk. Lets stop it now before someone gets hurt.

To all those villa fans who brought tickets for opposing fans. SHAME ON YOU!

[JohnCresswell]

General (and others),

Just to let you know, the clubs measures did work to some degree, as I personally know of one Liverpool fan who was a member with Villa and only ever bought tickets for the Liverpool game. When they tried to buy tickets this year, they were turned down as the ticket office had looked into the purchase history and identified them as a Liverpool fan correctly.

[musicw8832]

I sat in the Trinity Road Upper (A1 seating area) for this match and there were two Liverpool fans in front of me. I am with others, the club needs to do work to find out who brought the tickets and for the appropriate action to be taken. Furthermore away fans caught in amoungst home fans should be thrown out of the ground. We need to take a hard line on this issue.

Catering was abominable. There were still cues ten minutes into the second half and almost everything was sold out before the half-time interval was even over. I was left with a choice of chips or chips. One bloke shouted at the catering staff "We pay a lot of money to watch that shower of s*** out there (pointing to the pitch), we shouldn't expect the same thing buying a pie and a drink." He has a point General. I too am not going to bother again until I hear of significant improvement on VillaTalk.

Very positive feedback on the cosmetic changes. Thank you for doing such a great job in and around the ground.

[sidsnose]

General

I was very impressed with the changes that have been made to the ground, and obiously the holte pub.

But just a quick question regarding the new eadvertising screens that are round the bottom of three of the stands, is there any reason why they do not go around the D E Stand??

Also catering again was poor, I was thinking of having a drink in the holte end lower but queues at the bars made me decide not to bother!!

[rjw63]

But just a quick question regarding the new eadvertising screens that are round the bottom of three of the stands, is there any reason why they do not go around the D E Stand??

Because the cameras can't see them I'd imagine......advertisers wont pay if the ads arent on TV

[c-krulak]

General Krulak here:

1. Catering. We had 30% more "servers" around the stadium than at any other time in the history of Villa. We had excess food ordered in and prepared. We had folks walking the concourses to see what impact was felt by fans. Bottom Line: still not where we need to be but BETTER than we have seen in a long while. The simple problem was that this was the largest crowd at Villa Park in years...and the Stadium and surronding areas are the same size whether 30,000 are in attendence or 42,000. We KNOW we still have problems but we sure as heck don't need some "specialists" to tell us where we have problems. We have brought in experts who are now on the staff and are making the improvements necessary. We recognize we aren't there yet but the factors impacting on service are intimately tied to capability of the infrastructure. We DO listen to our employees and DO react to what they say...but cannot "build" a bigger concourse overnight.

2. Security and away fans is KEY to us and the issues that surfaced at Villa Park and surrounding areas are being looked at. Russ Appleton (former Marine Colonel) is at Villa Park today looking into this issue.

3. With 42,000+ folks at the game, the traffic pattern is never going to be perfect. I have waited 3 hours to get out of Old Trafford...we aren't alone when a full house arrives.

4. Disabled...let me look into this one.

[mb]

Thanks General, you really are a top man.

[blandy]

I know it was obviously patchy, with some people not getting food/drink etc, but my experience was in line with the above. I just never used to even try to get food at H-Time, the queues were so big, but got a pie in about 1 minute on Saturday, in the Holte Suite. Nice, too and served by a friendly girl, not stressed out by the pressure of "overload". Much better. Thanks.

[villab0y]

Regarding point 2

I think the main improvement would be educating the stewards.

Perhaps get some of the Marine Colonels mates to steward instead of the weak minded people we seem to have now.

They seem more intent on telling Villa fans to sit down before the game has even kicked off, than they are about dealing with away fans.

[Ginge]

To be fair the first match always throws up problems that need ironing out, the problems seem massive on here as the expectation of us as fans has changed with a new board arriving and with promises of improvements etc we expect them over night. Maybe if things havent improved by next match we will have more cause for concern, personally i wasnt at the game Saturday so can only comment on what has been reported on here. Building bigger concourses is not the answer to any problems mentioned on here though.