Aston Villa Protest Group

[dont_do_it_doug.]

27 minutes ago, Rob182 said:

How can Randy commit funding before a transfer window?

/tinhat

Well, we had communication from the club regarding this recently. From the Chairman, Hollis. That we won't be spending our way out of this. We then proceeded to spend zero pounds in January. Then came the accounts. 

Obviously nothing in life is certain. But by putting this pressure on him we are hoping to motivate him in some small capacity to do so. Nothing else has worked over the past 6 years, not even the threat and now the certainty of relegation. So if there is only a 1% chance that supporter lead protest can effect that, then try we must. IMO. 

The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. We will never claim "victory", for what it's worth. We are though, frankly, giving it our best shot as are the thousands who are joining in with these protests. 

Edited April 4, 2016 by dont_do_it_doug.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

1 hour ago, Zatman said:

I know people are a bit worried about Acorns Day which in fairness to the club is a good initiative but maybe instead of buying a programme, pie and a pint in the ground give the money to Acorns instead as a different sign of protesting

Yep. Great shout that. 

I will also say that we are trying to set up this justgiving site and that any excess funding we receive will go to Acorns. Just so you know in advance. 

[markavfc40]

14 minutes ago, supernova26 said:

Protest vs Chelsea was good....but this seats thing won't be very effective. The police will not allow big groups to hang about for 7 minutes before sitting down. Where do you plan to congregate for 7 minutes?

 

I wouldn't imagine this will be a highly attended game but I believe the concourses have capacity to hold all supporters in that particular section/stand it relates to. In fairness you get thousands in there just before most games anyway. We are also encouraging fans to gather outside amongst other supporters and sing songs etc.

I would be confident in saying there won't be any safety issues caused by this.

[GENTLEMAN]

19 minutes ago, supernova26 said:

Protest vs Chelsea was good....but this seats thing won't be very effective. The police will not allow big groups to hang about for 7 minutes before sitting down. Where do you plan to congregate for 7 minutes?

Can you fly over VP?? These plane banner protests always attract attention. Their about £1500 to organise. Just set one of those crowd sourcing sites and you'll have that in no time. I suggest the banner to say A.V.F.C For Sale....maybe an idea for the next home match after Bournemouth.  

Nice idea, why don't you arrange it?

[supernova26]

The current organisers are doing a grand job, I don't want to step on their shoes. I'll happily contribute a fiver to the fund though 

A blimp would be better though! Planes a bit overdone now. 

http://www.alternative-advertising.co.uk/prices.html

[dont_do_it_doug.]

If people are worried about overcrowding in the concourse never go to QPR. I had visions of Bradford trying to get out of there when I went a couple of years back. Terrifying. 

Villa Park? No such issues. The concourses are huge, open, modern and designed to take capacity.  How many people go for a piss and a pie at half time? 10,000 at full capacity? Yeah, I think this will be fine. 

As Mark said, we will also be suggesting meeting points outside the ground. All good. 

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Shall I tell you the very best way in which people can protest the players? By ensuring that Randy Lerner is motivated to sell the club and in the meanwhile provide the necessary funding to ensure we never have to see them or the likes of them in a Villa shirt again. 

Whilst we do that, it doesn't require organised protest to make our feelings known towards that shower of spineless shit bags. 

[villa4europe]

Protest vs Chelsea was good....but this seats thing won't be very effective. The police will not allow big groups to hang about for 7 minutes before sitting down. Where do you plan to congregate for 7 minutes?

Like I said when I did it before they let you do it they just increased the number of stewards and police and went round asking people "what you doing? Why? What do you think that'll achieve?" You could see people being made to feel uncomfortable

That with the TVs turned off which I'd never seen before or since, I can't remember if they stopped serving food too

You won't get anywhere near the number of people protesting and standing on the concourse as you do before the game or at half time so they can't play the safety card, it'll be a couple of hundred per section at most (sorry guys that's the reality) the concourse in the holte can take a couple of thousand per section easily

[briny_ear]

How can Randy commit funding before a transfer window?

/tinhat

I'm guessing this is a sort of accounting joke, right? (Based on a technicality about the meaning of to "commit" funding, I.e. To spend money.)

Wonder if there are any good accounting jokes people would like to share (prob. not in this thread)

[The_Rev]

8 hours ago, supernova26 said:

The current organisers are doing a grand job, I don't want to step on their shoes. I'll happily contribute a fiver to the fund though 

A blimp would be better though! Planes a bit overdone now. 

http://www.alternative-advertising.co.uk/prices.html

That's one of those shitty tethered blimps that  second hand car dealers have. They are tiny. 

[Rob182]

Well, we had communication from the club regarding this recently. From the Chairman, Hollis. That we won't be spending our way out of this. We then proceeded to spend zero pounds in January. Then came the accounts. 

Obviously nothing in life is certain. But by putting this pressure on him we are hoping to motivate him in some small capacity to do so. Nothing else has worked over the past 6 years, not even the threat and now the certainty of relegation. So if there is only a 1% chance that supporter lead protest can effect that, then try we must. IMO. 

The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. We will never claim "victory", for what it's worth. We are though, frankly, giving it our best shot as are the thousands who are joining in with these protests. 

Again, tin hat mode here, but the comments about not spending our way out of 'it' were in relation to the relegation battle, weren't they? If so, I kind of see the logic that you can't just throw money at it like QPR did with Samba etc, which might have been what those comments were insinuating.

We spent zero pounds in January, but Garde wasn't given no money. He was given money but went for a goalkeeper who couldn't get a permit. He also went for a couple of other (cheap) players too, even if those broke down for mysterious reasons (rumours of Reilly not actually contacting the players that Garde wanted?)

If part of the protest is to encourage Randy to put his hands in his pockets, then I'm on board with this, 100%.

I have seen other comments about trying to make Randy commit to selling the club.

This, I'm really uneasy with.

Simply passing the ownership to someone else will not resolve all our problems. We could get a MUCH worse owner than Lerner, with worse intentions. We could get an owner who doesn't want to put in any of his own money to cover the ongoing debt we seem to have. Where will that leave us?

There's all the talk of 'even if there's a 1% chance we'll make a difference'.

Well, if Randy does sell, what is the chance, percentage wise, that we'll get an owner who puts in more money than Randy does. Going on the history of good and bad new owners for a club in our position... I'd guess... 30%? 20%?

Maybe an even lower percentage if Randy is pushed to sell quicker, and results in selling us to a 'lesser' owner than he'd ideally like to.

/tin hat

[Rob182]

I'm guessing this is a sort of accounting joke, right? (Based on a technicality about the meaning of to "commit" funding, I.e. To spend money.)

Wonder if there are any good accounting jokes people would like to share (prob. not in this thread)

Ha.. I'm afraid not briny. I know not this additional meaning of the word 'commit'.

I tend to zone out whenever the accounting threads pop up.

[chrisp65]

8 minutes ago, Rob182 said:

I have seen other comments about trying to make Randy commit to selling the club.

This, I'm really uneasy with.

Simply passing the ownership to someone else will not resolve all our problems. We could get a MUCH worse owner than Lerner, with worse intentions. We could get an owner who doesn't want to put in any of his own money to cover the ongoing debt we seem to have. Where will that leave us?

We could get a much worse owner.

He could be permanently absent, make every decision too late, make every decision worse than the last one, sack and appoint a couple of managers per year, turn the player budget on and off at random, appoint foreign friends with no nouse and no respect to the board, fail to communicate, get us relegated and break all manner of records we don't won't to be associated with on the way down. He could be incompetent. He could instill a sense of defeat through all the staff from the stewards to the tea ladies to the players and the manager. He could withdraw the biscuits. He could have no plan to stop the rot, no understanding of business, no understanding of fans, no idea how to stop us dropping another level again. He could stink the place out with failure.

If Lerner is still here in another 2 years I'm absolutely confident he will have got us out of the Championship....

Of course, to be worse, he'd have to do something else on top of all that. I guess he could build houses on Villa Park and move the club to Redditch?

[Rob182]

No, to be worse, he could simply stop putting money into the club to cover the debt, like other owners might not want or be able to do.

If people think that being 20th in the overall pile of English leagues is bad, they'll be in for a shock if we get an owner like the chicken men or Carson Yeung.

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, Rob182 said:

No, to be worse, he could simply stop putting money into the club to cover the debt, like other owners might not want or be able to do.

If people think that being 20th in the overall pile of English leagues is bad, they'll be in for a shock if we get an owner like the chicken men or Carson Yeung.

No, I'm not in for a shock. I understand the type of people that are out there.

What part of Lerner's record so far makes you think waiting 1 week, 1 year or a decade will make a difference to Lerner's ability to sell to the right person? He is incompetent. He just blagged it this far by somehow spending his millions on covering off incompetence rather than real investment.

Did Lerner speculate to accumulate? No, he spunked it until he flunked it.

Right now, I think Lerner will drive away fans, strangle the infrastructure, drive up debt, wait a few years and then panic and randomly sell to chicken men.

[Rob182]

Lerner is incompetent. But let's not pretend that every decision he has ever made has been wrong. We've been shit for a long time, but he has made a few decent choices in his time here.

That, for me, gives me a tiny bit of hope that he might sell to a half-decent owner, as that is surely his intention. Even if it's an owner who only has modest financial backing, but actually has a clue about the direction he wants to take the club.

I think it's extremely likely that a rushed sale will increase the likelihood of getting a worse owner.

[Stevo985]

7 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Like I said when I did it before they let you do it they just increased the number of stewards and police and went round asking people "what you doing? Why? What do you think that'll achieve?" You could see people being made to feel uncomfortable

That with the TVs turned off which I'd never seen before or since, I can't remember if they stopped serving food too

You won't get anywhere near the number of people protesting and standing on the concourse as you do before the game or at half time so they can't play the safety card, it'll be a couple of hundred per section at most (sorry guys that's the reality) the concourse in the holte can take a couple of thousand per section easily

To be fair, I'm sure they usually stop serving food and turn the TVs off anyway don't they when the game kicks off? To encourage people to go out and not stay in the concourses.

I don't think that part was unique to that protest.

[briny_ear]

Does anyone else get irritated when posters try to hijack this thread and turn it into a general discussion about Lerner good thing or bad, etc.?

This thread is specifically about the protest at the Bournemouth game. If you want to discuss the good or bad points of our current owner, the meaning of life or anything else, there are plenty of threads where that can be done.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

48 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

To be fair, I'm sure they usually stop serving food and turn the TVs off anyway don't they when the game kicks off? To encourage people to go out and not stay in the concourses.

I don't think that part was unique to that protest.

No to the TVs thing. At least not that I've ever known in the Lower Holte End. 

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Hearing that they've tried to curb this form of protest previously just spurs us on even more. Despite the media this may have had last time and with respect due, we are hardly inconspicuous.

This was the lead sports story in the mail all day yesterday.  We have faces, names, if the club have an issue with it they know to contact us. 

They won't. Should we?