CI Posted October 28, 2011 Author Share Posted October 28, 2011 What was the question about Reform Acquisitions Realty Ltd ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kidlewis Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 At the end of the day we need more revenue to offer more wages. We are limited in that respect short of going down some unpopular routes or developing heavily around the ground. A Villa hotel would be something nice for people to use. If there are improved conference facilities coming whenever they develop the North Stand, a small hotel offering decent accommodation for clients, fans at the weekend would be a good earner, especially as for something like that a hotel brand might stump up a good portion of the costs (if not all) to be on site. I am not sure how arsey the council are but the area around the ground isn't exactly Kensington, so if the club offer to bring in things to improve the area and make the area more attractive it's more likely to get the go ahead. Also a pre season cup tournament would help things too. I would prefer things like the above to happen than renaming the stadium or selling out by sponsoring throw ins and goal kicks, or another layer of pitch advertising. they should upsell products at a discounted rates when people buy Season Tickets and offer a more dynamic product to consumers. why not buy a ticket and a drink and a pie in one go and have a "fast lane" for people who do this and not use cash? I would definitely do that if it meant quicker half time access to a beer and a pie. I am in marketing so whilst those ideas (I know) would work, the logistics of implementing these things can be very costly and difficult and when you do the detailed analysis might not yield too much more revenue. however at the moment if over a season those make half a million profit, then why not? another idea which may be popular is use some space near the ground for a set of small 5 a side pitches and do a Villa fans league. offering people 5 a side leagues which anyone can get, however it's in the grounds of VP, most will be villa fans and you pay a small premium for the privalege. I'd rather play there than Star City etc if I was close enough. Coventry Connection was cheap but it was an awful surface and was basically glorified fighting for 13 minutes rather than football. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CI Posted October 28, 2011 Author Share Posted October 28, 2011 Remember Stumps and Aston Brewery Herbert tried a few of these initiatives bless him Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mykeyb Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 You can't completely blame Randy for the wage bill, he was gambling on us been able to extend the ground, but unfortunately we just don't have the fan base that go to the games to do that. Yes you can. Good business men, with a proper board, don't gamble. They make informed decisions and act on them. Petrov and Heskey on £50k+. Who else would have taken those two of us and matched those wages? He overpaid (wages wise) IMO because he did not know the market and did not get the right advice. Someone else asked earlier who the best chairman was. Whoever appointed David Dien at Arsenal would be my answer. A good chairman needs to put a good management team in place and use them well, not a bunch of yes men with no knowledge of the business or market it operates in. Most good businessmen realise their limitations and seek advice from professionals on how to improve their business. Randy did this when he appointed the 2 guys to the board when he bought the club. Neither lasted very long (for reasons unknown) and havent been replaced. This for me is the major failing of Lerner. He has done a piss-poor job of running the Browns which is a sport he should know a little about, he knows very little about football and some of the decisions have proved to be nieve, some have shown a complete lack of business acumen to boot. Maybe if he had someone on the board who knows how to run a club the wage problem may not have got to the stage where it has basically crippled the club as Randy tried to stem the flow of cash in such a short timeframe. I do worry that unless we suffer the ignaomy of being the 3rd relegation if 4 seasons for McLeish he will be in charge come next season and the crowds may well take another 5000+ dip. Once gone they will be very hard to get back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barry'sboots Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 telegraph The French-born Cameroon international singled out Villa as an example of a club failing to show enough ambition to compete at the highest level."ambition" has got nothing to do with selling Young, Milner and Downing. They all wanted out for bigger clubs or in the case of Milner, more money. We can't be expected to triple the wages of players who want out. They only held out because they have Modric and Bale on long term contracts. Modric is tied up until 2016 when he will be 31 I think. Bale is there until May 2014 when he will be 25 - a bit like Young/Milner. It will be interesting to see if they can keep Bale when the big clubs come sniffing with only a year left on his contract. What Levy appears to have done well is kept their contracts up to date with renewals. This can be good but, obviously, could also bite you in the bum if players are on long term lucrative contracts but are not performing - step forward Mr Beye! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshVilla Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 We should be battling with stoke everton and newcastle to finish in the top 8 positions this season i think it might be to much to ask considering our false position of 9th last season within which we had a much stronger squad With possibly fulham and the baggies trying to break in there as well Man City United Chelsea Spurs Arsenal Liverpool Will be the top 6 with us competing amongst the midtable clubs that should be where were competing and aiming for anyway whether randy appointed a decent manager and backed him will tell the tale come the end of the season one things for certain though heavy investment is needed in january if players are available or in the summer most likely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
makouns_grin Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 I really dont get the big deal of the premier league these days. People some almost obsessed with being in it. When the only really good thing is playing against better players, who end up beating us anyway. Football is football, are all the people in leagues other than the premier league miserable, dont go and watch, dont enjoy winning or celebrating a goal? Bollocks. We're not going to win the league, we're not going to get into the chumps league and nobody else wants to be in the europa league. So why does everyone get so worked up about it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delphinho123 Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 I really dont get the big deal of the premier league these days. People some almost obsessed with being in it. When the only really good thing is playing against better players, who end up beating us anyway. Football is football, are all the people in leagues other than the premier league miserable, dont go and watch, dont enjoy winning or celebrating a goal? Bollocks. We're not going to win the league, we're not going to get into the chumps league and nobody else wants to be in the europa league. So why does everyone get so worked up about it? Are you saying we should be in the championship? Sometimes I wonder if it would be all that bad if we were.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
houllierout Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 We should be battling with stoke everton and newcastle to finish in the top 8 positions this season i think it might be to much to ask considering our false position of 9th last season within which we had a much stronger squad With possibly fulham and the baggies trying to break in there as well Man City United Chelsea Spurs Arsenal Liverpool Will be the top 6 with us competing amongst the midtable clubs that should be where were competing and aiming for anyway whether randy appointed a decent manager and backed him will tell the tale come the end of the season one things for certain though heavy investment is needed in january if players are available or in the summer most likely. pass me what your smoking please! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian_Taylor Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 At the end of the day we need more revenue to offer more wages. We are limited in that respect short of going down some unpopular routes or developing heavily around the ground. A Villa hotel would be something nice for people to use. If there are improved conference facilities coming whenever they develop the North Stand, a small hotel offering decent accommodation for clients, fans at the weekend would be a good earner, especially as for something like that a hotel brand might stump up a good portion of the costs (if not all) to be on site. I am not sure how arsey the council are but the area around the ground isn't exactly Kensington, so if the club offer to bring in things to improve the area and make the area more attractive it's more likely to get the go ahead. Also a pre season cup tournament would help things too. I would prefer things like the above to happen than renaming the stadium or selling out by sponsoring throw ins and goal kicks, or another layer of pitch advertising. they should upsell products at a discounted rates when people buy Season Tickets and offer a more dynamic product to consumers. why not buy a ticket and a drink and a pie in one go and have a "fast lane" for people who do this and not use cash? I would definitely do that if it meant quicker half time access to a beer and a pie. I am in marketing so whilst those ideas (I know) would work, the logistics of implementing these things can be very costly and difficult and when you do the detailed analysis might not yield too much more revenue. however at the moment if over a season those make half a million profit, then why not? another idea which may be popular is use some space near the ground for a set of small 5 a side pitches and do a Villa fans league. offering people 5 a side leagues which anyone can get, however it's in the grounds of VP, most will be villa fans and you pay a small premium for the privalege. I'd rather play there than Star City etc if I was close enough. Coventry Connection was cheap but it was an awful surface and was basically glorified fighting for 13 minutes rather than football. The biggest revenue in sport is naming rights for stadiums. In the NFL all stadium have huge huge deals that pretty much cover a big proportion of building new stadiums. It's beginning to happen over here too, the deals for the Emarites and Etihad stadiums are massive. It's a hard toss up between tradition and then being offered say £300m for 10years, whilst not looking like **** idiots (hello Sportsdirect @ St. James Park). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 Going back to the original title of the thread my sense is that Randy has completely lost interest in the club and we are now being run on a 'care and maintenance basis'. My basis for thinking this is no more complex than the total lack of information coming from the club beyond the usual platitudes and propaganda. Faulkner inspires no confidence at all, that total and utter clown 'the General' has gone to ground, thank goodness, and Randy is.......who knows. Meanwhile the club is collapsing around their collective ears. I don't know much about American football but as far as I can glean Randy Lerner seems to be perceived as a piss poor owner of a football franchise and that seems to be where Aston Villa are heading. Funnily enough I have no problem with the principle of Randy controlling expenditure. It's just that with every else. The lack of communication, the managerial appointment shambles, the lack of clear direction, the treating the fans like fools. I could go on. For example it's OK to limit transfer funds and wages if you have a really good manager to work within those constraints like David Moyes but we made a hurried appointment totally contrary to the criteria we had previously set out. That smacks of poor management yet again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaRoy Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 We're not going anywhere with nice bloke, but completely 1 dimensional Alex McLiesh at the helm. But no point in getting rid, because we can't offer a new manager funds to build own squad, so we'd probably end up with a manager of similar ilk. The appointment by Randy in the first place was nothing short of uninspired, unimaginative and bizzare, but now we just gotta stick and hope for the best. Benoit-Ass Ekotto is perhaps right in some respects, but I'm sure the only reason they kept there players was because they actually made the champions league and still look favourites to regain a place with a very good squad. We fell short sadly, thats why our players left. If we made champions league, we'd have kept our stars and bought in more players. Spurs are eating the pudding now, we are watching them eat it, thinking, what if. S*** happens. Can't Randy just pop to Vegas and stick, Hutton, Beye, Ireland and Heskey on red and hope for a double up? Win or lose, we win. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CI Posted October 28, 2011 Author Share Posted October 28, 2011 The appointment of Eck was bizzare and a massive risk. The only motive I can see RL had was to antagonise the Villa fans. Either that or he just panicked Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barry'sboots Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 Can't Randy just pop to Vegas and stick, Hutton, Beye, Ireland and Heskey on red and hope for a double up? Win or lose, we win. Doesn't that mean two Huttons, two Beyes, two Irelands and two Heskeys? Double the wage bill and no way out. :winkold: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaRoy Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 Can't Randy just pop to Vegas and stick, Hutton, Beye, Ireland and Heskey on red and hope for a double up? Win or lose, we win. Doesn't that mean two Huttons, two Beyes, two Irelands and two Heskeys? Double the wage bill and no way out. :winkold: Seeing as immediatley cloning a fully grown Heskey is still beyond human science, I'd hope for the cash value of 2 . The casino can then send them to the footballing version of a car boot sale to sell to some mugs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
makouns_grin Posted October 29, 2011 Share Posted October 29, 2011 I really dont get the big deal of the premier league these days. People some almost obsessed with being in it. When the only really good thing is playing against better players, who end up beating us anyway. Football is football, are all the people in leagues other than the premier league miserable, dont go and watch, dont enjoy winning or celebrating a goal? Bollocks. We're not going to win the league, we're not going to get into the chumps league and nobody else wants to be in the europa league. So why does everyone get so worked up about it? Are you saying we should be in the championship? Sometimes I wonder if it would be all that bad if we were.... No we shouldn't just be there full stop. But its really not the end of the world, if you stop and think about it for a min. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Posted October 29, 2011 Share Posted October 29, 2011 I really dont get the big deal of the premier league these days. People some almost obsessed with being in it. When the only really good thing is playing against better players, who end up beating us anyway. Football is football, are all the people in leagues other than the premier league miserable, dont go and watch, dont enjoy winning or celebrating a goal? Bollocks. We're not going to win the league, we're not going to get into the chumps league and nobody else wants to be in the europa league. So why does everyone get so worked up about it? Are you saying we should be in the championship? Sometimes I wonder if it would be all that bad if we were.... No we shouldn't just be there full stop. But its really not the end of the world, if you stop and think about it for a min. It may not be the end of the world precisely but for me and most fans it would be a complete and unmitigated disaster. Why? Because I could not see us getting out of that division any time soon. We would lose our remaining decent players plus the best of our young players. Crowds at Villa Park would be decimated and given we have to balance the books in the new austere Lerner world, that plus the loss of the Sky money would mean we would be stuck in the Championship for years. So I have thought about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
barry'sboots Posted October 29, 2011 Share Posted October 29, 2011 No we shouldn't just be there full stop. But its really not the end of the world, if you stop and think about it for a min. You really are desperate to support Randy if you are making this argument. Our revenues and youth set up should mean that, with decent management, we should be comfortably good enough to stay in the PL. It really would take a poor manager to take us down IMO but I think RL might have found him. However, if we did go down I don't think it would be terminal. We would lose some of our "stars" but we would surely see a lot more of our youth come through and this could be interesting BUT I don't want to see it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John_Lerwill Posted October 29, 2011 Share Posted October 29, 2011 No we shouldn't just be there full stop. But its really not the end of the world, if you stop and think about it for a min. You really are desperate to support Randy if you are making this argument. I certainly agree with that!! Our revenues and youth set up should mean that, with decent management, we should be comfortably good enough to stay in the PL. It really would take a poor manager to take us down IMO but I think RL might have found him. However, if we did go down I don't think it would be terminal. We would lose some of our "stars" but we would surely see a lot more of our youth come through and this could be interesting BUT I don't want to see it! Though our youth set up is very good, it's rare that someone makes it to a consistent level in the first team. However, I'm wondering if the youth set up does not concentrate enough on developing the character of the players. Not since the 80s have we had youth coming through of sufficient staying power and ability. The Moore brothers looked so brilliant early on, but what happened to them? And they were not the only ones. It may well be that Villa could get back to the Prem within 2 or 3 years, but what level will the cluib have been reduced to? I can see Villa becoming like a latter-day West Brom if things go on as they are. What a come down from the greatness of the pre-1935 era and the early 80s. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TRO Posted October 30, 2011 Share Posted October 30, 2011 No we shouldn't just be there full stop. But its really not the end of the world, if you stop and think about it for a min. You really are desperate to support Randy if you are making this argument. I certainly agree with that!! Our revenues and youth set up should mean that, with decent management, we should be comfortably good enough to stay in the PL. It really would take a poor manager to take us down IMO but I think RL might have found him. However, if we did go down I don't think it would be terminal. We would lose some of our "stars" but we would surely see a lot more of our youth come through and this could be interesting BUT I don't want to see it! Though our youth set up is very good, it's rare that someone makes it to a consistent level in the first team. However, I'm wondering if the youth set up does not concentrate enough on developing the character of the players. Not since the 80s have we had youth coming through of sufficient staying power and ability. The Moore brothers looked so brilliant early on, but what happened to them? And they were not the only ones. It may well be that Villa could get back to the Prem within 2 or 3 years, but what level will the cluib have been reduced to? I can see Villa becoming like a latter-day West Brom if things go on as they are. What a come down from the greatness of the pre-1935 era and the early 80s. John, you have touched a subject I've been aware of for some time. The players we produce from the youth may have a certain talents ,but are not fully equiped to take on the riggers of the premier league.... Talent without desire and application is questionable. The judgements/comments I hear about our youth players I take with a pinch of salt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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