Steven Hollis

[foreveryoung]

2 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

Kings resignation letter doesn't suggest that this was Hollis fault. He specifically states that following communication with the owner (Lerner) and the football board it is with great sorrow that he will be tendering his resignation and that he is sure he (Hollis) will understand.

I would not be surprised if Hollis has been dismayed to find that he was supposedly now running the club, he brings in Bernstein, King and Little to form a football board and within weeks, following direct communication with Lerner and the football board, two thirds of that board resign.

I just worry, as has been said, there was no compromise. King an Bernstien must have been discussed this with Hollis. I don't believe Lerner would not undermine Hollis so much, if so, he must be next. Although my belief is Hollis backs Lerner 100%

[markavfc40]

4 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

I just worry, as has been said, there was no compromise. King an Bernstien must have been discussed this with Hollis. I don't believe Lerner would not undermine Hollis so much, if so, he must be next. Although my belief is Hollis backs Lerner 100%

In all fairness mate we all just guessing aren't we, I know I am :-)

Fair play to King and Bernstein, especially King, who were pretty straight in their resignation letters. I just wish they had been a little more specific as to exactly what the reasons were.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Hollis is here to oversee our destruction. He is Karellen.

[foreveryoung]

8 minutes ago, CarewsEyebrowDesigner said:

Hollis is here to oversee our destruction. He is Karellen.

Unfortunately I think your bang on the money. He has a remit to follow, an I think he is doing it by the book.

[OutByEaster?]

Hollis is either the Chairman, in which case he should have been the driving force behind the resignations, or he's not.

If he's not then one of two things apply:

Either, he's got the title of Chairman but has been given no real power, in which case he should resign in disgust along with King and Bernstein.

Or he's here purely and specifically to try to engineer a sale - which means we should be asking who the hell is running the football club in the meantime.

 

[Chindie]

13 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Hollis is either the Chairman, in which case he should have been the driving force behind the resignations, or he's not.

If he's not then one of two things apply:

Either, he's got the title of Chairman but has been given no real power, in which case he should resign in disgust along with King and Bernstein.

Or he's here purely and specifically to try to engineer a sale - which means we should be asking who the hell is running the football club in the meantime.

 

I don't think it's that either/or.

The title is probably the most accurate he could have, because whilst he doesn't have ultimate say, as he ultimately reports to Lerner, he's running the club on Lerner's behalf. Lerner sets the budget, because only he can. Hollis therefore doesn't have ultimate power, but he's a regent.

It's also fairly clear he's engineering the club for sale at the same time, hence the sackings and shuffles and, initially, the football board. Get the house in order to benefit it and help shift it.

[OutByEaster?]

28 minutes ago, Chindie said:

I don't think it's that either/or.

The title is probably the most accurate he could have, because whilst he doesn't have ultimate say, as he ultimately reports to Lerner, he's running the club on Lerner's behalf. Lerner sets the budget, because only he can. Hollis therefore doesn't have ultimate power, but he's a regent.

It's also fairly clear he's engineering the club for sale at the same time, hence the sackings and shuffles and, initially, the football board. Get the house in order to benefit it and help shift it.

But if he's chairman, he shouldn't be running the club - that's the CEO's job - he should be enforcing budgetary boundaries, rubber stamping plans and not getting involved in the day to day. If he's acting as a de facto CEO then he's part of the problem and must surely have been an influencing factor on why Bernstein and King resigned -if he's acting as CEO then Bernstein is unnecessary and should quite rightly have gone - if he's not acting as CEO, he's not acting as Chairman either, because by the sounds of things, Lerner is doing that - then what is he for? 

I think given the muddle around who can do what, resignations were to be expected.

 

[mikeyp102]

8 hours ago, hippo said:

We still look expensive at £75m - I think around £40m is a fair price.....

Where is the price of £75m coming from?

[briny_ear]

2 minutes ago, mikeyp102 said:

Where is the price of £75m coming from?

Press speculation that the selling price has been halved. The references are somewhere back over the last couple of pages.

EDIT - maybe more than a couple

Edited April 19, 2016 by briny_ear

[Chindie]

18 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

But if he's chairman, he shouldn't be running the club - that's the CEO's job - he should be enforcing budgetary boundaries, rubber stamping plans and not getting involved in the day to day. If he's acting as a de facto CEO then he's part of the problem and must surely have been an influencing factor on why Bernstein and King resigned -if he's acting as CEO then Bernstein is unnecessary and should quite rightly have gone - if he's not acting as CEO, he's not acting as Chairman either, because by the sounds of things, Lerner is doing that - then what is he for? 

I think given the muddle around who can do what, resignations were to be expected.

 

The title is neither here nor there I think. I work in an industry where some companies give people junior to me titles with the word 'president' in them, and I'm at the bottom of the ladder believe me. I stated my career at a company with a chairman who was literally a figure head, he visited the building twice a year and cracked a joke at company conferences. The business was run by the CEO. 

Whether he is chairman or CEO, he doesn't own the club and we don't have shareholders so he has to be subservient to someone simply because he's spending the owners money. The letters yesterday heavily suggest the issue is the owner and the obvious conclusion to draw is the money. Everything happening recently has boiled down to cash not being invested and the letters certainly tie into that even if it's not entirely spelled out.

Hollis has the title Chairman and his remit is run the club in Lerner's absence. Bernstein was brought in to work with Hollis as a fabled 'football man' and to outline their positions Bernstein was head of the 'football board' to get things revolving around the pitch and players in order, and it was established he, and the football board, would report to Hollis. There's no reason that can't work. Hollis is a businessman, admittedly doesn't know football, so he has someone with him and their team sorting that while he focuses on the money based on Lerner's budgets.

I think you're getting tangled in titles and a distrust of Hollis you've had since his announcement. I don't think he's done, or doing, much wrong. The letters weren't critical of him, and I think he'd be out the door if his remit was changed or undermined.

[VillaChris]

Yeah agree with that....although OBE's question is how is making the football decisions currently e.g drawing up the list and speaking to managerial targets. The answer is either amusingly Brian Little is currently our de facto CEO or more likely....we are doing nothing as ever and letting time go by idly.

What's the betting Newcastle won't go down until May, Benitez will leave, they'll get someone to replace him within a few weeks....and it will be still before we appoint a new manager.

[Chindie]

That's a more pertinent question now the football board has collapsed.

I'd suspect one of the following happens

• We twiddle our thumbs until Hollis is forced to do something
• Hollis, with Little advising, are going about speaking to people as we speak
• Hollis and Little follow whatever was going on with the football board and try to get the names they had on the list.
• We try to bring back in 'football men' to bring the football board back to life and they do it.

I suspect it'll be 2 or 3. Either way, I expect the appointment to be cheap, and I expect it won't be made before seasons end. Either way, Hollis appoints them unless we try to get the football board going again.

[Duck]

Wasn't Hollis the one who was brought in to severely cut running costs?

If it's only him left then we are truly stuffed

[lexicon]

5 hours ago, Duck said:

Wasn't Hollis the one who was brought in to severely cut running costs?

If it's only him left then we are truly stuffed

Not necessarily - it may help to sell the club, which is something we definitely need to do. 

I don't really see a problem in scaling back either, we've overspent for years, we've wasted a ton of money on wages and it has created a mercenary culture in the dressing room. We really need to go back to square one and start again with a new owner who isn't absolutely clueless. 

[OutByEaster?]

8 hours ago, Chindie said:

I stated my career at a company with a chairman who was literally a figure head, he visited the building twice a year and cracked a joke at company conferences. The business was run by the CEO.

That's the traditional model - it's what I was expecting of the chairman - at Villa, regardless of titles, this makes Randy the Chairman.

Quote

Whether he is chairman or CEO, he doesn't own the club and we don't have shareholders so he has to be subservient to someone simply because he's spending the owners money. The letters yesterday heavily suggest the issue is the owner and the obvious conclusion to draw is the money. Everything happening recently has boiled down to cash not being invested and the letters certainly tie into that even if it's not entirely spelled out.

Absolutely agree with that - the issue here is that we've asked a couple of people to create a business plan - then when they've presented it in all it's detail, I get the feeling they've been met with the equivalent of a bemused grin from across the pond and promptly thought "Why ask us to do it in the first place if you're not interested in carrying it out?" and scarpered quick smart.

Quote

Hollis has the title Chairman and his remit is run the club in Lerner's absence.

Here's where we disagree - Hollis has the title Chairman and his remit is to represent Lerner in Lerner's absence. Hollis can't run a football club, he hasn't got a scooby how to do that, it's why he put together a football board - and in fairness to him he's put together one that a lot of people like. That's very much a Chairman's role, finding people to run your business and letting them direct and run the business - nice to see Randy handing this particular bit of Chairmanship over to him (the bit that involves doing some work) and up until the resignations, fair play to Hollis for doing it well.

But...the resignations are different - there's no malice in either letter for Hollis and in fact, in at least one letter (possibly both) he's referred to as "we" by King and Bernstein, as part of the team - that's credit to him as a bloke working with another bloke and gaining respect from people who have respect in football and business - it says good things about him as a man. For the role of Chairman, it's wrong. We should have the operating team on one side and the board on the other - Hollis should be in Lerner's "We" not King and Bernstein's "We" - and he would be if he was being permitted to do his job.

In principle, if Lerner has appointed Hollis as a Chairman, as someone who to a large extent replaces Lerner in the structure, then it's Hollis that Bernstein and King should have been presenting the results of their root and branch investigation to, and crucially, it's Hollis who should have been the one to make the decision on whether to take up the recommendations they presented (within the established budgetary constraint). In this case, it reads very much like he's not been allowed to take up that part of the role of Chairman and that Randy has retained the right to decisions on how the club will operate.

Hollis should have been saying yes or no and then taking the result to New York for rubber stamping - if that rubber stamping didn't happen, then Hollis would have been the person whose letter I was expecting first. In the end, the process seems to have missed Hollis out - if he's Chairman.

In reality I think Hollis has been given a small number of the duties associated with Chairmanship and a handful of those associated with the CEO - leaving the rest of the duties of CEO scattered amongst a team who whilst they thought they understood their roles were rudely surprised on completion of the first phase of the job they thought they were doing.

Quote

 I think you're getting tangled in titles and a distrust of Hollis you've had since his announcement. I don't think he's done, or doing, much wrong. The letters weren't critical of him, and I think he'd be out the door if his remit was changed or undermined. 

You might well be right, I don't like him - I thought his initial press conferences were awful - I also thought he'd done a reasonable job in appointing people to the 'football board' and had overseen some steps towards building bridges with the fans through some popular decisions.

His remit though is bizarre - he's not a Chairman, Lerner retains most of the decision making and budget setting responsibilities of that role, to the point where he'll force out people whose recommendations it would appear that Hollis agrees with - and I'm hopeful he's not a CEO, as he's not qualified, even in his own opinion - if he is a CEO and he's bringing in 'assistants' then you have to ask, why not just bring in a CEO?

If Bernstein had been CEO and Lerner Chairman, would the results of the last few days have been any different?

I'm increasingly convinced his role is try to sell the club and be helpful where he can - now he might well be doing that reasonably well - but it's not the most defined job description.

As a club, we have an Owner who is overruling his Chairman, a Chairman who isn't able to make directional decisions over his operating team, a senior operational team that have left having discovered they have no real ability to change things, no first team manager and the idea that we'll have a 'football board' who'll be making some decisions over the head of that manager should he ever arrive. It's a mess.

That's not Hollis's fault - it's Lerner's - absolutely and 100%. What I would say is that if we weren't for sale, I don't think Hollis would be here and I definitely don't agree that his remit is to run the club in Randy's absence.

[hippo]

Could it be that Lerner didn't like the football board - so bided his time then picked his moment to destroy it ?

Hollis appointed the board - presumably it was his own idea, to be fair the bloke he stated from more or less day 1  he wasn't a football man - but took steps to address that gap. I always felt the football board looked a little unweidly, (I was fearing they couldn't agree on a manager TBH).

So what happens now ? - its looks to me like Hollis is the new Tom Fox - and he has (For now) a sounding board in Brian Little. But little does has the level of expertise that Bernstein does. In summary Balance the books, worry about the football later.

Devils Advocate...

One crumb for me - is that maybe the football people put forward proposals to make us great again, regardless of cost. To be fair running at £27m losses there was never going to be a massive war chest for players. Spent wisely the money raised from player sales (lets say £20m) could with a good manager fund a promotion push. I'm just hoping thats still on the table.

 

 

[sexbelowsound]

I think we can probably say with a fair degree of certainty that the overriding reason for Berstein and King's departure is that Randolph is a big, fat monkey turd.

[blandy]

3 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

... the issue here is that we've asked a couple of people to create a business plan - then when they've presented it in all it's detail, I get the feeling they've been met with the equivalent of a bemused grin from across the pond and promptly thought "Why ask us to do it in the first place if you're not interested in carrying it out?" and scarpered quick smart.

...the resignations are different - there's no malice in either letter for Hollis and in fact, in at least one letter (possibly both) he's referred to as "we" by King and Bernstein, as part of the team - that's credit to him as a bloke working with another bloke and gaining respect from people who have respect in football and business - it says good things about him as a man. For the role of Chairman, it's wrong. We should have the operating team on one side and the board on the other - Hollis should be in Lerner's "We" not King and Bernstein's "We" - and he would be if he was being permitted to do his job.

In principle, if Lerner has appointed Hollis as a Chairman, as someone who to a large extent replaces Lerner in the structure, then it's Hollis that Bernstein and King should have been presenting the results of their root and branch investigation to, and crucially, it's Hollis who should have been the one to make the decision on whether to take up the recommendations they presented (within the established budgetary constraint). In this case, it reads very much like he's not been allowed to take up that part of the role of Chairman and that Randy has retained the right to decisions on how the club will operate.....

As a club, we have an Owner who is overruling his Chairman, ...It's a mess.

That's not Hollis's fault - it's Lerner's - absolutely and 100%. What I would say is that if we weren't for sale, I don't think Hollis would be here and I definitely don't agree that his remit is to run the club in Randy's absence.

Thing is Scott (and I've selectively quoted you for brevity) there's a lot you write that seems right to me, but I can't help but draw a different conclusion, which is that Randy Lerner has (as has been the case previously) basically changed his mind on a whim. he's gone from  "me not having a buyer, so I'll take a step back and let the club look after itself under Hollis" to "I desperately want rid of it now"

Which has meant that the terms of reference for the football board have effectively been undermined. That they had worked on the word that RL was staying, but uninvolved, so there would be stability of ownership for the medium term, to "no I'm selling as soon as I can get any kind of half decent price" - so no stability, no guarantee of future ownership, no guarantee of budget for a new manager. None of the conditions which they would need to be able to appoint a Moyes/Pearson/whoever.. None of the conditions where, working with a new manager they could calculate paying off/sacking various toxic players. None of the conditions where they could discharge their responsibilities as given to them. Add in the likes of Krulak and Reilly possibly being "looked after" by RL and undermining reporting lines, going behind Bernstein's back to talk to lerner directly..

That's why it is what it is is my speculation.

None of that is Hollis's fault at all. It's Lerner. Doing stuff on a whim that's counter productive (again).

Given they now all know the desire is to sell the club ASAP, Hollis staying to do that could have been kind of agreed with King and Bernstein and hence no mention of him in the letters - they all 3 no doubt share our view of Randy Lerner as very, very, difficult to work for due to changing his mind, being uninterested then getting involved, not trying hard to sell, then to desperate to sell...

 

[a m ole]

LEAKED: Video of Nigel Pearson's interview with Steve Hollis for Villa job

 

[Guest av1]

22 hours ago, Chindie said:

 

• We try to bring back in 'football men' to bring the football board back to life and they do it.

I suspect it'll be 2 or 3. Either way, I expect the appointment to be cheap, and I expect it won't be made before seasons end. Either way, Hollis appoints them unless we try to get the football board going again.

Me me me, pick me pick me,  pleeeease pick me.