dn1982

Having seen our accounts and more importantly our wages ratio of 59% we are in the perfect position for a takeover. If we did get bought by a Chinese firm it could be massive. China is still untapped. If we became the club for China with massive exposure there the benefits are endless. Chelsea and Man City haven't got whole countries to tap into like that they're just bankrolled by their owners. For us coming to the party late we would need to have massive new revenue streams and China could be that.

It just shows that we are now in the perfect financial position for someone to come in and be able to invest and grow the club. With the new TV money new sponsorship and kit deals all in the next 12 months we could be in for a good time again.

The 59% wage ratio is interesting. 60% is the magical figure we are supposed to aim for so that very good especially with the new TV money due it'll give us a lot of room to improve the squad and even offer big wages to the likes of Benteke to keep hold of him.

Out of interest what would you want him to do? What does Abramovic or the Glazers do? Owners do not do the hands on stuff.

Have a long term plan, putting things in place to try and succeed and make sure these things run smoothly and continue.

Currently we've slashed wages with the sole aim of surviving and now he's stepped back waiting for the club to be sold.

Massive difference.

He's long term plan is a short term one and that's to sell the club!!! If you listened to Tom Fox interview when he came he set out how and what we aim to achieve I think seeing as he's employed by Lerner it's was also Lerners plan at that time. Why have a dog and bark yourself.

At the minute we have one senior defender in our back 4. Bacuna and Richardson aren't natural full backs and Okore is still learning about the Premier. If we get Hutton and Cissokho back we will be more solid but I'm happy with what im seeing. The football is the best in years. We have just had more possession than Man City which is the first time in 6 1/2 years that's happened and it wasn't the boring keep ball we saw under Lambert. I think the only stat we lost out on was the important one. Saying we have a problem with the defence isn't strictly true either as Guzans mistake and the wall capitulating is school boy stuff which I guarantee won't happen again. Saturday is a big day not just for points but also because at home our tactics haven't been as good as away and thats something we need to work on.

 

Common myth - yes the football is better than Lambert - but the 'football in the best in years'  - home defeats to stoke and swansea, a scrambled draw with QPR - none of which we played particularly well. Granted Spurs , Liverpool were good performances - but suggesting were in a rich vein of form is premature IMO.

Common myth?? The football is better than we have seen in years. The last time I can remember us playing football the way we are now was under Houlier and that was for a brief period. We have just been to Man City and had more possession and were the better team but lost. That doesn't change how good the football was. At the end of Lamberts first season we played exciting counter attacking football but we never bossed games. Now we actually play a very nice brand of football. Yes it is early days but it's 4 years since Houlier. Even under MON we never played possession football like this. So for me it is the best football in years and hopefully in time you'll agree with me!

He has nothing to do with the club and is waiting for it to be sold.

Spot on. Absolutely nothing to do with the club.

... except own it

... and employ Tom Fox

... and provide a little money for Gil and Sinclair

... and rubberstamp Lambert out for Sherwood in

other than that - what have the Romans... errr... Lerner ever done for us?

He hired tom fox to help sell the club after selling it. From what Sherwood said when he joined it sounds like fox is making the decisions and running the club.

I'm glad he's out the way, its the only time decent decisions have been made.

I feel like Randy Lerner is finally getting there

He has nothing to do with the club and is waiting for it to be sold.

"Nothing to do with the club" in what sense? I have no doubt he'll sell up if the right offer comes in, but I think he's still pretty involved.

From what I remember, Sherwood made some comments when he joined about fox running the show. I dont think Lerner has much involvement at all at the moment.

Out of interest what would you want him to do? What does Abramovic or the Glazers do? Owners do not do the hands on stuff.

Why is that? We have just beat Spurs and Liverpool and then outplayed Man City who's to say that if we added 2/3 quality players to our current squad we can't challenge for Europe next year? Hopefully we will also have a Europa campaign to go at and winning that gets you Champions League.

I think the top-six are set (including Spurs in that). Everton won't be as bad next season I feel, West Ham are going to hire a far better manager going by reports and Southampton may well strengthen the squad so that they are not too badly affected by the Europa League (providing they even qualify for it). We are putting in some fantastic displays at the moment but I don't believe you can use a few games as a basis to suggest we can jump that far up the league straight away. Even if we improve the squad further, I think we will be in a similar boat to Swansea and can look try and establish ourselves as the best of the rest, if you know what I mean.

I believe and have done all season that our squad was good enough to be 8-12th. We were extremely poorly managed and find ourselves scrapping to stay up so even if we never strengthened any further I think we would be challenge the Stoke Swansea positions. Everton aren't that much better than us and Southampton show what you can do with a big summer of investment and good management. Currently the top 6/7 are locked in but I think 8-12 is not that difficult to achieve. From there we can consolidate and hopefully crack on. You say the jump is to high to make but we slid down easily enough!!

I can understand people worrying about us staying up but I'm puzzled how people write us off and then make teams who are playing worse than us or who have tougher games out to be world beaters. It makes no sense what so ever. We should've beat QPR and showed strong character to come back and draw we then out play 3 of the top 6 in the next 3 games granted it was only worth 3 pts but the performances can't be underestimated. Our defeat on Saturday can only fire up the players as we were hard done by so with a rocking VP I expect us to win in a very entertaining game against Everton. I think 35 will probably be enough but I can see us getting 38+ anyway so I'm quite confident.

But the not also-ran positions (terrible term) would be out of reach without Benteke?

It wasn't that bad

But my point was that we aren't realistically going to finish higher than eighth even with Benteke, so there is little value keeping him another season on that basis.

Why is that? We have just beat Spurs and Liverpool and then outplayed Man City who's to say that if we added 2/3 quality players to our current squad we can't challenge for Europe next year? Hopefully we will also have a Europa campaign to go at and winning that gets you Champions League.

We are currently playing the best football in years and creating chances galore why are people hung up about Gil? If we weren't doing those things I can understand but we are. When we signed him he was a breath of fresh air because all the others had had their creativity knocked out of them by Lambert. Maybe he isn't as good as we think just that the others were awful? That has been rectified. I still think he'll have a big future hear but moaning about people not playing when we are playing some great stuff is silly.

It would be great if the club could supply some figures concerning:

 

How many tickets are being made available to fans of the original 25,000 allocation.

How many current ST holders we have.

How many Villa Cash members we have (ST holders could be deducted from that figure).

How many fans have a 4 + Cup booking history (excluding ST holders).

How many fans have an 8+ game history. 

 

I guess those figures were used to set the sales criteria so they should be available.

 

This would enable fans to get some idea of how likely they may be to get a ticket on the understanding that this information could not be said to guarantee their right to a ticket which would still be subject to availability. Or the club could just say we expect there will still be some tickets available at the start of 11th, 12th or 13th May for example.

Why? You can't magically get a season ticket or go to extra games. The only reason I can see the need to know this is to decide whether to attend the next 2 games. Even if they did supply the numbers it's futile because not 100% of people who are eligible will go. I expect once tickets are on sale the ticket office will keep us informed of any criteria changes as they did for the semi. I think they have done the criteria the way they have and have the cut off point at 7 at the minute as that will be virtually the allocation done.

I can offer extra reasons dn1982. I would like to know whether my son who has a booking history of 12 has a hope of getting a ticket and if so, I will wait to buy my own (I qualify on day 1) so we can sit together. I'm sure others would like to know how likely it is that tickets will be available on the day that their booking history will click in. I hope you are right and that there will be tickets on 13/5. But a little more information which I hope will come out sooner rather than later would ease the concerns of a lot of Villa fans.

I understand that point it's a shame you can't buy your ticket but get the seat allocated at a later date. If the ticket office said they expect it go to a certain point and it never there'd be hell to pay but if they say it'll run out on X and goes further people will moan aswell saying they weren't expecting it!

West Brom will be bringing in the same amount of TV money and probably have far lower operating costs than us. Seems a good club to buy if you want to actually try and make money from a football club - certainly a better bet than us, Everton or Newcastle where the expectations of the fans are higher, the aforementioned operating costs are higher etc.

If the buyers only want to make money we don't want them anyway!

Benteke is a 1 in 2 striker he's 24 and coming into his prime £30m should be the starting point of any bidding war.

At the minute we have one senior defender in our back 4. Bacuna and Richardson aren't natural full backs and Okore is still learning about the Premier. If we get Hutton and Cissokho back we will be more solid but I'm happy with what im seeing. The football is the best in years. We have just had more possession than Man City which is the first time in 6 1/2 years that's happened and it wasn't the boring keep ball we saw under Lambert. I think the only stat we lost out on was the important one. Saying we have a problem with the defence isn't strictly true either as Guzans mistake and the wall capitulating is school boy stuff which I guarantee won't happen again. Saturday is a big day not just for points but also because at home our tactics haven't been as good as away and thats something we need to work on.

I can't seem to register for Club Wembley?

You can't register you have to buy a season ticket with them.

It would be great if the club could supply some figures concerning:

 

How many tickets are being made available to fans of the original 25,000 allocation.

How many current ST holders we have.

How many Villa Cash members we have (ST holders could be deducted from that figure).

How many fans have a 4 + Cup booking history (excluding ST holders).

How many fans have an 8+ game history. 

 

I guess those figures were used to set the sales criteria so they should be available.

 

This would enable fans to get some idea of how likely they may be to get a ticket on the understanding that this information could not be said to guarantee their right to a ticket which would still be subject to availability. Or the club could just say we expect there will still be some tickets available at the start of 11th, 12th or 13th May for example.

Why? You can't magically get a season ticket or go to extra games. The only reason I can see the need to know this is to decide whether to attend the next 2 games. Even if they did supply the numbers it's futile because not 100% of people who are eligible will go. I expect once tickets are on sale the ticket office will keep us informed of any criteria changes as they did for the semi. I think they have done the criteria the way they have and have the cut off point at 7 at the minute as that will be virtually the allocation done.

If we don't get 15 points from the next four we are doomed doomed I tell ya!!

Do players actually lose that much in the last year of their contract these days?? If next summer we were to sell Benteke their would be an auction for him. Didn't we get £17m for young and £12m for Barry in their last years? Which is roughly their value anyway!

If a top four club came in for Benteke we might struggle to keep him but I think he enjoys playing for Sherwood and if we do get bought we can hopefully show him the ambition and vision that he'll stay so we should be looking at players to add not worrying about him going. For me we need a new GK I'd take Richards as a defender id try for Ben Davies from Spurs for LB sign Sinclair and hopefully Cleverley which is something I didn't think I'd say 2 months ago! Then get another CF who can play as a 10. Who I've no idea.

Clearing the dead wood and duds will be a challenge.

We have took control and if Guzan hadn't messed up the tactics would have been working fine. It's nice to see we haven't panicked but carried on as told to do.

Guzan has had a major part in keeping Villa up the last two seasons so people really need to calm down about his first big mistake in God knows how long.

We're definitely showing signs of a cup semi hangover. With results going the way they did earlier, the last thing we need is a severe beating. Having said that, as poor as we've been, Man City aren't all that. Get them in at half time just a goal down and we could get something out of this.

TBF he doesn't make many mistakes but he is getting worse. His mannerism don't spread calm to the team I don't think he has it in him to make his own decisions. We have obviously been told to play it out from the back but sometimes you have to hoof it. We need a new keeper in the summer in my opinion.

After 1 game in which we were outstanding to watch, were back to being absolutely wank.

17 minutes against Man City. That's all.

It's about the approach rob.

We look absolutely pathetic. Regardless of the opposition, our players look hopeless.

We haven't been wank as you put it since Sherwood arrived!

Guzan is good when he doesn't have to think. I'd bring Given back in for the rest of the season

Do we really need that much restructuring though?

 

Cleverley

centre back

full back

maybe another midfielder (FWIW I think Gil will be used a lot more next season)

 

with Kozak back so no need for another striker then maybe get a few young talents in that we can develop

I think we need a different sort of striker. A CF 10 as compared to a midfield 10 if you know what I mean. A Gudjonson Bergkamp type rather than a Grealish Gil. But totally agree we don't need much but I want us to upgrade more than just add