AVST: AGM with Tom Fox Q&A

[DCJonah]

9 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

Where have you been spoken to "like an idiot". Have you seen the questions they were asked? I think you'll find it was the other way around. 

Regards to spending he was asked direct questions to which he gave direct answers. Outside of throwing Lerner under a bus, which is NEVER going to happen no matter how hard you want it, again not sure what could have been said. 

I understand people being angry at Lerner, I am too, but Fox? Nah, always liked the bloke. I trust him too. He's a career man, he'll want to do the best he can for us because it will reflect well on him. I've no issue with that whatsoever. 

I did see the questions and yes some were idiotic. But the whole 'money doesn't buy success' and 'we spent £60 million' in the summer is talking to us like idiots. Like fans who don't know the realities surrounding both those statements. 

I don't like or trust him. He's done nothing but makes us worse since being here. Nothing suggests to me he will improve us. It also sounds like he's been replaced and demoted like OBE said previously 

[Demitri_C]

34 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

What did he say that was wrong to you? 

He defended the recruitment policy in the summer to a point, also admitting that they tried too much too soon, possibly put too much faith in the manager at the time who may I remind you turned out to be a **** idiot. Something Fox took responsibility for. All seems fair enough to me. Nice to get some clarification on that. 

Other than that... I'm honestly not seeing the issue here. He's basically said "all those things you thought about the club, you were right. It's a shambles". What else could he have said to appease people? Do you want him to be the latest fall guy and quit? 

I didnt like the fact where he dismissed the fact when someone highlighted get a legend in or a football guy. this was dismissed as in what would they do any differently to us. Oh I dont know maybe they know the club better than them? They have played the game and understand the fans. 

Fox has done a poor job thus far. We have declined rapidly, and I feel that if we dont come back up at first attempt he should be sacked

[ThunderPower_14]

I was quite happy that they were prepared to acknowledge how bad it had gotten over the past 5 or 6 years. Sinking to this level could never have happened in a year or two. It's nice for the top men at the club to acknowledge that our current position is the result of absolutely abhorrent decision making for more than half a decade.

 

We're clearly getting relegated. It's happening. It's something we need to acknowledge and plan for. That doesn't mean the player should stop trying. It means we need to stop the rot at board level and start actually making a plan on how to move this football club forward, and that means planning for next season in the championship. Fox is right when he says that we're in a position where signing players who could actually help us avoid relegation is basically impossible because nobody who is anybody wants to come to a side that's guaranteed relegation.

 

Both men talked about the fact that we've been left behind strategically, which is why we can't compete with clubs that we should be 5 times the size of. Closing that gap is paramount and they appear to have acknowledged that and are putting things in place to correct it.

 

I'm not happy with the state of the club but I have very little issue with anything said at this meeting.

[Stevo985]

2 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

I did see the questions and yes some were idiotic. But the whole 'money doesn't buy success' and 'we spent £60 million' in the summer is talking to us like idiots. Like fans who don't know the realities surrounding both those statements. 

But aren't both of those things true? or at least close.

They both expanded on the "money doesn't buy success" thing. They didn't say we weren't going to spend. They said they needed to get things right to make sure that when they do spend, it's spent more effectively than it has been previously, and that's what will bring success.

I don't know of a single fan who wouldn't agree that we've wasted a lot of money in recent years (MON years especially)

I don't know the exact figure spent in the summer, but it was certainly around £50m of reported fees from memory. So I don't see what's so outrageous about what he's said there.

[Grasshopper]

4 hours ago, Gary Thomas said:

1) The problem is Fox and Hollis’s experience is all about the later, that’s what they know, so that is what they focus all their attention on, it makes absolute sense to them. But that is not going to get us out of this mess any time soon. They can spend all the time they want fixing up our battered and neglected car (infrastructure), but without an engine we aint going anywhere but downhill towards that cliff. 

2) Call in the emergency services ffs, get the engine running and drive  us to a place of safety, then fix the car. 

Perfectly put

1) is why we think they are pricks

2) is what should be dont immediately

[villa4europe]

talksports coverage of this is unsurprisingly shocking

all over the customers comment and apparently they said that no owner had spent more than randy, conveniently left out "3rd"

[KHV]

57 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

I think we are reading too deep into that. It may not be that kind of integration they are talking about, it could be a dressing room issue.

In fact, we know it is don't we?  

A club should be prepared for that too. It's not rocket science to realise Sherwood, Wilkins and Robson probably are not up too much when it comes to French.  Someone should have been bought in coaching wise

 

[OutByEaster?]

What worries me still is this confusion over roles, especially where there are areas in which they clearly disagree.

Tom is the boss, he's the CEO, he runs the club, he makes the decisions about the club; Steve is the Chairman, he manages Tom, sets budgets and targets for him.

They differ completely in a key area - recruitment.

According to our Chairman, we wasted £60m in the summer, we spent the money and we're bottom of the table - so therefore, it would be ridiculous to go back to the owner and ask for more money to repeat the mistake - first we need to fix the club, so that when we spend money it works better.

 

Quote

You have to put yourself in the position, as a new board, is it credible to go to the shareholder and say let’s spend a ton of money again, even though it hasn’t actually achieved the long-term success? It’s not tackling the major issue of bringing in players and getting the best out of them. We are looking at a number of players in strategic positions. Where the deal is right, let’s see what happens. It would be reckless to put the chequebook away completely, but also it would be irresponsible to throw huge sums of money into a situation that is not working so well.

According to our CEO, we bought well in the summer, we've got young players that the manager likes who are contributing to the first team.

 

Quote

Two-thirds of everything we spent over the summer are part of the matchday XI, really the remaining third are part of the matchday 18. With the exception of those two players, most others are featuring,

 

Further, he's been clear that the problem was the way we integrated those players - that the strategy of getting lots of new players was aggressive and it hasn't worked out. A lesson has been learned.

The lesson being around getting 27 cheap players with Lambert, not because Lambert loved a long shot, but because Lambert needed a lot of players - the lesson is knowing that in the immediate we need the right players to get us back to a position of stability.

The logical thing to take from Tom Fox's words is that doing it again is exactly the right thing to do. Tailoring it to the Championship maybe necessary , but we need to take corrective action to get a squad that can compete.

I'm drawn back to this:

 

Quote

You have to put yourself in the position, as a new board, is it credible to go to the shareholder and say let’s spend a ton of money again, even though it hasn’t actually achieved the long-term success?

 

If we signed Veretout, Ayew, Gana, Amavi, Traore et al for seven months, then no, it hasn't achieved long term success - but that's plainly not true. We signed them with the next few years in mind, we signed them so that ultimately some of them will become good players here and some will be good players elsewhere, making us a profit when they go - that's still on - long term success of this summers spending is still very much a possibility.

Tom Fox is a very capable public speaker and confident CEO - he's been very clear that he believes the club was finding an even keel and that he'd begun to turn around some of the problems of the past - the summer was part of that, I think he's reasonably pleased with it.

Thus far, Steven Hollis has shown a worrying tendency to put his foot in his mouth when speaking publicly, and as a Chairman, we shouldn't be hearing too much from him anyway. We've gone from having an owner/chairman who didn't speak enough to having a Chairman that thinks he's the CEO who won't shut up and is a little embarrassing.

These two disagree about where the club is - and they seem to have been given overlapping roles. I find that particularly worrying.

 

 

 

 

 

[BG_Villa_Fan]

I don't think it's worth dissecting what Fox and Hollis said in great detail, to be honest, there isn't too much that they could have said in this situation that'd help them come out of the meeting with a round of applause.

That said, I'm not sure whether it's funny or ridiculous, but this is the first time I see a newly(ish) appointed CEO of any sort of company completely murdering the man who hired them for the way they'd been running the company(club). If Aston Villa were a public company listed on Nasdaq they'd see their share's price drop significantly after such comments. I don't see how this would please Lerner, who's looking to sell. Generally when a company is listed for sale share prices go up. 

[srsmithusa]

So... if I have this right.  A Q&A session where supporters asked questions that often sounded more like accusations and the club leadership gave less than direct answers in an attempt to provide context and nuance, that made some feel a bit better but also made many feel more agitated.

Right.  We go again.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

36 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

I did see the questions and yes some were idiotic. But the whole 'money doesn't buy success' and 'we spent £60 million' in the summer is talking to us like idiots. Like fans who don't know the realities surrounding both those statements. 

I don't like or trust him. He's done nothing but makes us worse since being here. Nothing suggests to me he will improve us. It also sounds like he's been replaced and demoted like OBE said previously 

The books speak for themselves, I'm amazed fans need to ask these questions at all. Without spending the entire AGM boring down into the numbers, what else can they say?

Doesn't sound like he's been demoted to me. He's still CEO, he lead the AGM. 

[briny_ear]

Based on what Hollis said about the failed £60m investment last summer, shouldn't Fox resign? It was his investment plan. In any serious company he would be clearing his desk today.

Of course he won't go because what Hollis said was ill-judged and displayed a little bit of ignorance.

It's hard to have much confidence in the future with this clown at the helm.

[Stevo985]

12 minutes ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

The books speak for themselves, I'm amazed fans need to ask these questions at all. Without spending the entire AGM boring down into the numbers, what else can they say?

Doesn't sound like he's been demoted to me. He's still CEO, he lead the AGM. 

I don't see the confusion about their roles either. The only person who's been demoted in terms of duties is Lerner.

He was the chairman, Fox answered to him.

Now Hollis is the chairman, Fox answers to him.

It's the same in terms of that very high level structure, isn't it? The only difference is a new Chairman.

[Grasshopper]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

I'm surprised as well. I had been under the impression - perhaps mistakenly - that we had a woman whose exact job it was to very quickly help new players with finding houses, getting their belongings over, learning language basics etc. I was even under the impression that she was sufficiently well thought-of that it was one of the better features of our club. Oh well. Maybe it's not actually down to her - she might have left, or been sidelined by Sherwood, or something. 

Maybe she didnt give head.

pretty hard if you have 9/10 newbies to take care of

[bobzy]

I'm quite amazed at the amount of vitriol the board are getting here.

Fox and Hollis seem to be very open, apologetic, absorbing of blame (Fox) and saying that we need to get the club functioning properly.  They want to keep a steady playing squad and staff and improve commercial opportunities where this is appropriate.  The massive overspend that happened during Lerner's early days (which fans loved) is why, principally, we're in this mess.  Personally, I'm pleased we're doing something to get out of it.  It's a hard slog, and we're obviously in a mess financially (down to Lerner, one way or the other) but we've got people in place to make the most of a bad situation.  The only thing we care about as fans is league position - that's it.  The reality is that there's a whole load more to Villa's situation than just results.

The childish phrasing of questions in that transcript, the repeated nonsense about "football men", the hurling of abuse at the players/manager during and after games and the reaction of some on here is far more embarrassing than the people trying to turn our ship around.  Patience just isn't something we seem to have*.

 

 

* - "But we've been patient!  We've had 5 years of this!"

[briny_ear]

7 minutes ago, bobzy said:

 the reaction of some on here is far more embarrassing than the people trying to turn our ship around. .

Could you explain exactly how it is embarrassing, who is embarrassed by it and what do you think are the consequences?

[OutByEaster?]

2 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

I'm surprised as well. I had been under the impression - perhaps mistakenly - that we had a woman whose exact job it was to very quickly help new players with finding houses, getting their belongings over, learning language basics etc. I was even under the impression that she was sufficiently well thought-of that it was one of the better features of our club. Oh well. Maybe it's not actually down to her - she might have left, or been sidelined by Sherwood, or something. 

What she didn't do was take training - she was unlikely to look at a player and say, he doesn't speak any English stand him over there, if he picks it up he picks up, if not then screw him. Which from what I can gather is actually the approach that was taken, as ridiculous as that sounds.

 

[bobzy]

13 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

Could you explain exactly how it is embarrassing, who is embarrassed by it and what do you think are the consequences?

"Club insulting our intelligence", "Jumping to the defence of the board", mention of a £0 sponsorship deal being bad, "Trump-Hollis" being a brief collection of some embarrassing comments.

Who is embarrassed by it?  Me - by association of we all support Aston Villa.

Consequences of comments?  Nothing.  To be forgotten if/when we are back to being optimistic.  At which point, the board will be OK again.

[HanoiVillan]

10 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

What she didn't do was take training - she was unlikely to look at a player and say, he doesn't speak any English stand him over there, if he picks it up he picks up, if not then screw him. Which from what I can gather is actually the approach that was taken, as ridiculous as that sounds.

 

Yes, I see your point (and @London Villa) as well. I wasn't actually trying to blame her - as I said, I was under the impression she was highly thought-of, which was why I was surprised. I probably misinterpreted the comment about 'integrating players' as about off-the-field integration rather than on-the-field. 

[dn1982]

I am unhappy and angry about where we are in the league and what seems like certain relegation. I'm not unhappy or angry  with the answers that we were given last night. There wasn't any buck passing and Fox took full responsibility. They set out what we were aiming to do even if they messed it up this summer. We aren't a rich enough club or ever likely to be to start over every time a manager moves on so having a system that keeps the club going the right direction regardless is the right idea. The stuff about our revenue increase is embarrassing and has been the keystone behind the last 5 years of under investment. If we back Garde to a decent degree this window I'll back the board regardless because I think we need to gain some momentum going into next season so we need to finish strongly with a united fan base no matter what division we are in next year. If we don't I can only see unrest as we go into a downward spiral.