nick76

Same place where Daniel Levy stumps up cash for a Spurs Grealish signing lol

Does an owner have to be at the game..........it's nice but not a requirement in the modern age. Born and bred in Erdington, I grew up going to the Villa home and away domestically every game (couldnt afford intl away trips). Then I moved to Sydney for work purposes when I was 27 and remained for the last 14 years. I am fortunate that I have to travel to the UK for work roughly 2-4 times a year so get to see Villa play two or three home games a year but mostly I sit at home watching live the games back in Sydney and I get to see 95% of them, generally at some ungodly hour like 2am in the morning. Anyway my point is that I dont feel I am any less of a fan now than I was when I traveled the length and breath of England following Villa. My passion and most often my disappointment is just as strong as it was back then. I know our owners wont have that passion but in the modern age I dont think not being at the games is as relevant. My determination about them will be about their actions with Villa not their attendance to games and more than likely they are watching just as many games, like me.

or maybe they are Bruce players whereas before we were buying Steve Round type players. I have no idea!

Maradona won the World Cup single handily, even better let’s get him instead....lol A player is different to a manager even a great captain.

God I hope not, One inexperienced person I can get over but I hope if Henry comes in he’ll have the wisdom to get some experience as his number two

I don’t want Henry but I think you’re being naive. If they were after him I think it would be farther down the road than seeing if he is receptive before kicking Bruce out the door. Maybe disrespectful but it certainly wouldn’t surprise me given a lot of deals are done/close to being done before they should.

Inexperienced? Virtually nonexistent. He’s just a name, one of the best players the premier league ever saw but I wouldn’t want to risk the near future of Villa with somebody with virtually no experience, this is not fantasy football. A few examples at clubs that are already exceptional in that league, with vasts amount of money is not going to sway me that’ll work in our problem situation. Plus there are many many examples where it has failed, I mean we have recent examples of that ourselves at Villa.

I agree with you. For me it’s a big fat no to Thierry. Yes Bruce is far from perfect but Thierry is just a name and an unbelievable risk and I don’t think we are in a place for such a big gamble.

It’ll be interesting to see what they do to get around FFP. Can’t imagine them wanting to endure this upcoming season after significant player sales and then maybe the same the following year given a 3 year roll over of losses, reduced parachute payments and less revenue from tv etc. it’ll be hard to get promoted if our best players leave/left if we don’t buy further players but FFP restricts us so then we’d roll into a four season in the championship and I’m guessing that’s not what these guys are investing in. So I’m intrigued and somewhat excited what the plan is, especially after the gloom since May.

A pyramid scheme if I ever saw one ?

I may be naive but I'm still not buying he is that broke. I'm just a normal business man but I have most of my money invested in a number of investments and at the moment I dont want to pull any of that out because I have some time restrictions on some of it and on others they are doing well and I expect them to do better in the near term. Xia also has the major issue of taking money out of China, which is a problem because they seem to be putting more short term walls up at the moment (in the current political environment). In my world, I know of a few cases where simply things have been put on hold from China, which would normal not be an issue. If that is the case then it might explain why Xia wants to retain control but wouldnt mind some working capital in exchange for small ownership stake to cover the coming periods. It may well be the case he's broke and it's all gone to sh*t, I'm just putting an alternative scenario because some many people have jumped to the worst conclusions which maybe the case but may not. It just seems then strange that if that is the case why didnt Xia snap the hands of one the investors that has been interested.

I get the Xia bashing to some degree but wasnt it inevitable that we would lose Grealish if we didnt get promoted. Bigger clubs were bound to come in and unsettle him to get him in the premier league, this has just made it easier because we have financial issues. Believing that Grealish was going to stay if we werent in financial difficulties seems a little naive as good players get picked off easily from championship clubs that dont get promoted. Also saying we would rather not have snograss and JT, two of our better players last season seems a little strange. We were one game away from promotion and this wouldve been all rosy. Not having JT, Snograss and Johnstone means a much weaker team and we may not have made the playoffs. If we had started the season without them and some of the other players, this fan board wouldve been in uproar that we arent trying for promotion. It's a very fine line and it didnt pay off, I get that and it's causing us problems now but the other option wouldve not been acceptable a year ago either by this fan base.

I know, just simple things annoy me. Just why make things harder, as somebody mentioned somewhere else that it could be a death by a thousand cuts. Some we have control of and some we don't.

Wow that is hideous, I wont be buying that! in a time when we need to make money, design something that you can wear for training and for casual to sell more. Not a time for experimenting............................and failing IMO!!!!

For some reason I havent lost the plot yet. Nothing has happened playing wise aside from the loan players have gone. I'm sure when the sh*t hits the fan I will be a broken person but I'm still clinging to some hope that Xia has something planned and everybody has jumped the gun. Foolish I know....

aka Fabian Delph signed contract

I still think we should keep Bruce. We'll have a few loses of players and we'll bring in some cheap options but it wont be a massive overhaul of the squad which for me is key. Yes this core didnt get us up and you can argue why next season will be different but I'm sick of change, a new manager and overhaul of the squad will take time to bed in next season to get used to each other and given our circumstances I dont think we'll get value for the players we have when we sell. Bunker down and give it another season, if we can get a good start to the season unlike last season we can push for the top two. Continual change is no way to progress.

I'm assuming you are just joking!

Given how many other players we’d have to sell to make 40m we may only have 10 players left ? ?

But what is the alternative? If we have to find say 40m re FFP then our net spend has to be -40m. How many players do we have to sell excluding Jack without replacement. How weak will our squad be then if we go that route. We just don’t have our own players of value. Some of the best players were loan players like Terry, Johnstone, Snodgrass....we just don’t have many options

Given what has happened to us, losing Jack for 40m and getting to keep the rest of the squad together is a great let off. We have to remember that not going up was a disaster. If we only lose Jack and then shuffle a few players in and out i’ll be relieved. Of course I don’t want to lose Jack, it’s not something I want but it think we have be realistic where we are. The least worst result as we don’t have other players in our squad that have anywhere that kind of value.

Yep for me deserves an extension

I dont know if this has been mentioned in the 147 pages before hand but for me it has to be commenting on the internet. Outside of controlled forums like this or where you can restrict who sees you post like facebook (no jokes about facebook divulging all our data), you cant comment on public websites without some of the most extreme comments or views responses. I remember years ago watching an episode of West Wing where the character Josh Lyman (Deputy Chief of Staff) decided to respond to a website about him and his activities as DCoS. Then how bat sh1t crazy that turned out for the rest of the episode but it's very close to reality and getting worse as social media becomes a bigger part of our lives. Normal conversation on the internet is rare rather than the norm in my experience, which is a sad state of current culture for me

Wow the reaction on here is incredible. I'm very disappointed but you summed it up well. Disastrous time for this performance and result, which makes it so much worse but still have to keep in mind our record over the last couple of months has been exceptional. Reading some of the comments on here it's as if we've been on a bad run. Wrong time to have this result, baffling performance I agree with but some on this forum have to take into perspective. Our earlier in the season form will be because we dont get automatic promotion if that doesnt happen (which is looking unlikely now) not the current form.

You cant compare him to Hogan because they have different playing styles and suit different set ups. If you really want to compare them then if Hogan gets a chance I would bet my house on him scoring, if Davis gets a chance I'd put my house on him missing. I think Davis has so many great attributes and his potential is huge. Problem is none of those attributes seem to include knowing how to score, he doesnt in any sense seem to have that in his locker, he just looks like he doesnt know where the goal is