The club's relationship with the fans

[andycv]

5 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

Lol.

Ungrateful at being asked to pay more than Liverpool fans for tickets.

Unrealistic asking the club to not have us swimming in piss. Unrealistic to be able to get in the ground for kick-off when arriving with an hour to spare.

These are minor things (the plumbing issues) which have now been fixed. So do you feel the relationship is better now? Or still worse than with people who nearly bankrupted the club when we were in the Championship? 
 

I also think it hard to argue that the relationship with the board isn’t based on sporting outcomes on the pitch. Would we be happier if the club had extremely low prices and good communication playing in League One? I doubt it.

It is worth reading the statement in the Club’s annual report and accounts that are filed at Companies House: key financial performance is described as being able to fund and sustain a successful team.

 

 

[TRO]

2 hours ago, sidcow said:

Problem is you do still need to pack them in to get those roars or chants. 

This new world of global fans we're targeting are hardly going to watch us on telly in a half empty stadium against Bologna with a library atmosphere and go "yep, that's my new club I'm going to support now, book me on a flight with some GA+ tickets so I can experience those empty spaces first hand"

Could probably do with a few thousand of those pesky "legacy" fans about the place to teach them the words. 

Couldn't agree more....perhaps we should invoice the club for our singing rights, and the Holte End poets for their Lyrics.

The TV camera's wouldn't come without the atmosphere, generated by us.

[sne]

No one is asking for extremely low prices as far as I've seen. Seen loads of posts about more reasonable prices that would mean a lot to many fans but would set the club back a couple £m. Money that they'd possible get back a portion of if the stadium sold out and the people got into the stadium earlier ahead of the game.

[markavfc40]

37 minutes ago, TRO said:

I think you have misread my sentiments mark.....and your constant reference to wading through urine ( which is totally unacceptable) seems to have taken centre stage, when to my Knowledge happened once on the opening day of the season, when they was racing against time for the contractors to have it ready.

 

Quote

I think the misconception kicks in where, some folk think their grievances with the club is shared by all

The BS remark was in reference to you stating the above. I haven't a clue where that impression has come from, that some think their grievances are shared by all, as I haven't got the impression anyone thinks that.

The wading through piss issue is just one I have mentioned and certainly doesn't take centre stage. In fact I'd say in the grand scheme of things it is the least of most supporters worries which is quite the statement in itself I suppose and says a lot about the issues at the moment. Far bigger issues are pricing out supporters, splitting up some supporters from family/friends, selling season tickets for seats that don't exist, having fans pay through the nose to find that even arriving early, 40 minutes plus before kick off, still doesn't get you entry in time for kick off. As I've said before all the above isn't even close to covering everything but is enough on its own.

Probably my biggest issue though is that shit happens and things can go wrong. It is the lack of communication and contrition that pisses me off. Apologise for splitting up families/friends, apologise for selling seats that don't exist,  apologise for creating a situation where by fans who arrive in plenty of time can't access the ground in time for kick off, apologise for not fixing over the 3 month summer period toilets that were leaking out piss at the end of last season. 

I personally feel as disconnected with the club now as at any time during my 40 odd years following us/36 years as a season ticket holder. It is soul destroying, given the years of shit many of us endured, seeing long term really loyal supporters priced out and/or moved away from family/friends during a rare glimmer of shine for us. It is just simply not right. Justifying it by saying that is the way things are so suck it up isn't the answer. It hasn't been the answer for many clubs supporters, including Liverpool a club who unlike us as actually had success over the last 3 decades and successfully protested against price rises in 2016, and to meekly accept any shit, or perhaps in our case piss , thrown at us isn't the answer for us. 

Edited yesterday at 11:08 by markavfc40

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

7 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

Lol.

Ungrateful at being asked to pay more than Liverpool fans for tickets.

Unrealistic asking the club to not have us swimming in piss. Unrealistic to be able to get in the ground for kick-off when arriving with an hour to spare.

Why do we keep doing this?

The worst part is I know that you and the other lads know this... But just refuse to accept it due to the narrative

Yes... It's " unrealistic" wanting to consistently compete on the same playing field with less than half and one third ( in some cases ) of the revenue.

It's nowhere near rocket science.

Liverpool

" Commercial revenue for the Premier League giants in 2022-23 came to £272 million, up £25 million. Liverpool, heavyweights from English soccer's top-tier Premier League, saw their overall revenue for 2022-23 remain static compared to the previous season, at £594 million ($753 million). "

 

Aston Villa 

" Revenue increased to £217.7m, up from £178.4m in the previous year. “It was a good year in terms of finishing seventh, which meant they got well over £20m extra coming in with the way the Premier League allocates money between clubs,” says Maguire. _

 

 

Edited yesterday at 11:39 by JAMAICAN-VILLAN

[VillaChris]

50 minutes ago, sne said:

No one is asking for extremely low prices as far as I've seen. Seen loads of posts about more reasonable prices that would mean a lot to many fans but would set the club back a couple £m. Money that they'd possible get back a portion of if the stadium sold out and the people got into the stadium earlier ahead of the game.

Yep. I consider paying 40 + quid to watch prem games a fair amount of money but understand it's par for the course with our competitors now in the prem (and relegation strugglers charge similar prices).

I also accept we'll massively hike the prices for Bayern and Juve given the demand is there for many reasons.

No one should be accepting £85 for Bologna though, the club could've got a tiny PR win back by massively lowering prices for that. We don't fail PSR next summer if we do that so that's where a bit of common sense could've been applied.

On them if their are 5k empty seats as the press will be writing endless articles about it.

[Zatman]

5 hours ago, sidcow said:

Legacy fans. Love that expression. 

Those pain in the arse fans who have followed the club for years through thick and thin. A legacy issue to be dealt with and dropped ASAP for some shiny new rich fans. 

The pesky legacy fans that watched us struggle in Championship games vs the likes of Burton, Bolton and Millwall

They are the issue

[markavfc40]

1 hour ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Why do we keep doing this?

The worst part is I know that you and the other lads know this... But just refuse to accept it due to the narrative

Yes... It's " unrealistic" wanting to consistently compete on the same playing field with less than half and one third ( in some cases ) of the revenue.

It's nowhere near rocket science.

Liverpool

" Commercial revenue for the Premier League giants in 2022-23 came to £272 million, up £25 million. Liverpool, heavyweights from English soccer's top-tier Premier League, saw their overall revenue for 2022-23 remain static compared to the previous season, at £594 million ($753 million). "

 

Aston Villa 

" Revenue increased to £217.7m, up from £178.4m in the previous year. “It was a good year in terms of finishing seventh, which meant they got well over £20m extra coming in with the way the Premier League allocates money between clubs,” says Maguire. _

 

 

You know this but you are not even scratching the surface of making that gap up by increasing ticket prices to extortionate levels. At best you could probably squeeze 5% out of that gap.

The answer to getting up to anywhere near the income levels of Liverpool,Arsenal, Chelsea, Man Utd, Spurs etc is to increase commercial revenue, sponsorships etc etc. We're also 15-30k behind a number of other teams in terms of our stadium capacity. It is also of course reliant on sustained success. We fail to get Champions League next season and that is likely to be a loss of around £40-50 million.

I don't get this pricing out of some supporters. The financial gains, which are pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things, certainly don't mitigate the moral issue of disregarding supporters that stuck by the club through thin and thinner. 

This thread though and the overall relationship with supporters, certainly regular match day goers, as has been shown goes beyond just the ticket prices. It is the overall arrogant attitude of some at the club and the lack of contrition around a number of issues they have created. A short period of upturn on the pitch, thanks in the main to an exceptional manager, has meant that some fans have been happy to turn a blind eye to/tolerate many things they otherwise wouldn't have. Some things can't/shouldn't be ignored though. If things do drop off on the pitch though, which is certainly not beyond the realms, then tolerance really will be tested. 

Edited yesterday at 12:42 by markavfc40

[nick76]

57 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Why do we keep doing this?

The worst part is I know that you and the other lads know this... But just refuse to accept it due to the narrative

Yes... It's " unrealistic" wanting to consistently compete on the same playing field with less than half and one third ( in some cases ) of the revenue.

It's nowhere near rocket science.

Liverpool

" Commercial revenue for the Premier League giants in 2022-23 came to £272 million, up £25 million. Liverpool, heavyweights from English soccer's top-tier Premier League, saw their overall revenue for 2022-23 remain static compared to the previous season, at £594 million ($753 million). "

 

Aston Villa 

" Revenue increased to £217.7m, up from £178.4m in the previous year. “It was a good year in terms of finishing seventh, which meant they got well over £20m extra coming in with the way the Premier League allocates money between clubs,” says Maguire. _

 

 

But that difference isn’t going to come from match tickets.  The increase in match ticket prices is a few million to the club but devastating to many fans.  That gulf has to come from commercial revenue not average Joe match day tickets.  

The difference between £594m of Liverpool and £218m of Villa is not average joes match tickets is it.  Let’s say you add another £12m from match tickets and kill even more match goers from going….you are still £594m vs £230m.  Whereas if you got another £220m of commercial revenue, the difference between £450m (Villa target) and £438m (Villa target, less fleecing the fans) compared to Liverpool’s £594m doesn’t seem so bad.

[sidcow]

3 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

You know this but you are not even scratching the surface of making that gap up by increasing ticket prices to extortionate levels. At best you could probably squeeze 5% out of that gap.

The answer to getting up to the anywhere near the income levels of Liverpool,Arsenal, Chelsea, Man Utd, Spurs etc is to increase commercial revenue, sponsorships etc etc. We're also 15-30k behind a number of other teams in terms of our stadium capacity. It is also of course reliant on sustained success. We fail to get Champions League next season and that is likely to be a loss of around £40-50 million. 

I don't get this pricing out of some supporters. The financial gains, which are pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things, certainly don't mitigate the moral issue of disregarding supporters that stuck by the club through thin and thinner. 

This thread though and the overall relationship with supporters, certainly regular match day goers, as has been shown goes beyond just the ticket prices. It is the overall arrogant attitude of some at the club and the lack of contrition around a number of issues they have created. A short period of success on the pitch, thanks in the main to an exceptional manager, has meant that some fans have been happy to turn a blind eye to/tolerate many things they otherwise wouldn't have. Some things can't/shouldn't be ignored though. If things do drop off on the pitch though, which is certainly not beyond the realms, then tolerance really will be tested. 

Like I said earlier. Is an extra £5m rinsed out of the everyday fans really going to be the difference between Unai Emery making us a successful club or not? I don't think so. 

 

[DaveAV1]

15 hours ago, allani said:

I'm going to keep out of this thread in general (as well as several others on related topics) but I think people are seeing completely the wrong enemy here.  The enemy shouldn't be Heck, it shouldn't be NSWE / Atairos.  The enemy here is the PL & UEFA and the ridiculous rules they have implemented to support the status quo and the "elite" clubs.  If FFP / PSR / etc didn't exist - very few of the decisions that are being made at the club would have been made.  Nas and Wes (and countless of their senior management team) have stated on multiple occasions that they are being prevented from running the club the way they want because they are having to comply with these ridiculous PSR / UEFA rules that place revenue at the centre of everything.  We can't hope to challenge the top 4 or the top 6 every season if they are able to spend two or three times the amount as us and we have to sell our best players just to comply with competition rules.

People can be pissed off at the club about the toilets / bathrooms and the length of time it takes to get served a beer or a pie.  But with almost everything else - I think the guns are being aimed in the wrong direction.  The owners aren't setting Heck targets on revenue generation to line their own pockets, they're not even doing it to minimise the money they are putting into the club.  They've more than done enough to show that they are comfortable with putting in more of their own money knowing that the value of their investment is increasing at least in line with this.  People should be complaining about how we are a great example of exactly why PSR is broken, why football is broken and why someone needs to **** on UEFA and the PL and declare the current rules illegal as breaking pretty much all fair competition and anti-cartel regulations that apply in almost every other type of "business".

There are plenty of ways to protect clubs from incompetent or corrupt owners - none of which would inhibit the aspirations of ambitious owners with a sound business plan in place.  Revenue is a pretty meaningless measure of almost any business - many of the most successful / valuable businesses in the world barely break even in any given year (partly down to tax "avoidance").  As it is we're being told that to be allowed to even try playing on the same playing field as the "old elite" we need to almost treble our revenue.  Yet we're not allowed to manufacture "artificial" sponsorship income (you can bet your mortgage on the fact that had Comcast sponsored Villa for £75m a year this season then the PL would have investigated the hell out of it and done all they could to block it), spending money on big stadium projects to bring in more fans is harder (see the problems Everton had compared to how easy it was for the "old elite" to do it or "inherit" government funded stadia), etc.

Trying to get Heck sacked is only likely to **** off our owners (unless he is massively failing to deliver against the targets they have set in which case they don't need fans to be telling them that).  It won't change anything - apart from maybe get someone in who can make hard ass decisions in the background whilst charming the pants off fans in the foreground (without ever lying or embellishing the truth).  So in my book it seems like there are 2 choices - (1) tell NSWE that "thanks but no thanks" we'd prefer to be playing for 14th every season and sell anyone who becomes a regular international so that we can keep prices low or (2) support the club by attacking the PL & UEFA and the real issue which is that the interests of the "old elite" far outweight true competition, ambition for all and you know actual financial fair play.  Although we've "lost" money over the last 3 years I doubt you could find a single accountant or financial expert in the world who would say that we are in a worse position now than we were 3 or 5 years ago.  Yes, we've lost money.  But it is not an amount that will impact on the wealth of our owners.  The losses are more than covered by the fact that the "business" is now worth at least 10 times what the owners bought it for.  Hell it is covered maybe 4 or 5 times over by just the value of the players - compare the current "value" of our squad to that of the squad when we were promoted.  Yet all of this is deemed irrelevant by the authorities.

Thank you for the above. To my mind it’s blindingly obvious that the aim of the so called elite clubs through their pals in the PL and UEFA is to keep the  chasing pack at arms length. They’ve treated Everton extremely badly in comparison with Man City for excample. NSWE’s veiled threat of calling in their lawyers seems to have kept them at bay for now. Agent Purslow and his Scouse pal kept us down for a while too. Until Nas had seen enough and brought significant changes to the club, most significantly being Unai, after which our tragectory has been all upwards. UTV!!!!

[andycv]

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

Like I said earlier. Is an extra £5m rinsed out of the everyday fans really going to be the difference between Unai Emery making us a successful club or not? I don't think so. 

 

But what if it is?

[sidcow]

1 minute ago, andycv said:

But what if it is?

But what if Aliens landed and stole all our money with a ray gun. I mean it's very very unlikely,but you never no. 

[sidcow]

54 minutes ago, DaveAV1 said:

Thank you for the above. To my mind it’s blindingly obvious that the aim of the so called elite clubs through their pals in the PL and UEFA is to keep the  chasing pack at arms length. They’ve treated Everton extremely badly in comparison with Man City for excample. NSWE’s veiled threat of calling in their lawyers seems to have kept them at bay for now. Agent Purslow and his Scouse pal kept us down for a while too. Until Nas had seen enough and brought significant changes to the club, most significantly being Unai, after which our tragectory has been all upwards. UTV!!!!

What the actual ****? I've seen Purslow crowbarred into thread totally necessarily before, but this one is really, really out there. 

Edited 23 hours ago by sidcow

[Mark Albrighton]

46 minutes ago, sidcow said:

What the actual ****? I've seen Purslow crowbarred into thread totally necessarily before, but this one is really, really out there. 

It’s interesting that Purslow was being blamed for the “gentrification of the Holte” by some, but now the blame has seemingly shifted away from that role to the owners or, maybe trying to pretend their previous misdirected outrage didn’t happen, the blame is more towards the broader “that’s the way the game is going” lament.

Also hilarious that the previous upward trajectory of going from an midtable championship side to a  midtable-ish premier league side is being completely ignored. 

Gotta crowbar in the old Purslow bashing, ain’t we? Pretend to ourselves that nothing positive happened whatsoever while he was here, course we do! 

Edited 22 hours ago by Mark Albrighton

[DaveAV1]

38 minutes ago, Mark Albrighton said:

It’s interesting that Purslow was being blamed for the “gentrification of the Holte” by some, but now the blame has seemingly shifted away from that role to the owners or, maybe trying to pretend their previous misdirected outrage didn’t happen, the blame is more towards the broader “that’s the way the game is going” lament.

Also hilarious that the previous upward trajectory of going from an midtable championship side to a  midtable-ish premier league side is being completely ignored. 

Gotta crowbar in the old Purslow bashing, ain’t we? Pretend to ourselves that nothing positive happened whatsoever while he was here, course we do! 

Lots of positive things happened under him, certainly at the start as NSWE we’re getting settled in, he was vital but as the club moved forwards with Unai he know longer was taking us forward off the pitch and his big mistake of appointing SG and some of the subsequent signings really hurt us and to some degree still do. The difference that has happened under Unai both on an off the pitch is unbelievable, it’s as if a light has suddenly been turned on. NAS deserves huge credit and thanks for this along with Wes. Christian Purslow certainly helped to get the ball rolling but then dropped it. UTV!!!!!!!

[Villatillidie95]

You do really notice the disconnect between the GA+ part of the holte and the normal bit….from the north stand it’s clear that it’s killed the atmosphere stone dead….very apparent 

[limpid]

13 minutes ago, Villatillidie95 said:

You do really notice the disconnect between the GA+ part of the holte and the normal bit….from the north stand it’s clear that it’s killed the atmosphere stone dead….very apparent 

Which part is this?

[thabucks]

1 hour ago, limpid said:

Which part is this?

The part between reality and opinion … You know cause anyone who can afford to pay for GA+ isn’t as much of a true fan than those who cannot / choose not to obviously. 
 

[El Segundo]

On 28/09/2024 at 13:36, QldVilla said:

You need to start with in your opinion. He’s not here to give you a hug, he’s here to deliver. Just because you don’t like the delivery, doesn’t mean you’re right. This is big business not the local confectionary store.

What a strange post.  If I need to start with that then so do you, and so does every other poster.  This is a discussion forum and it's a given that many points are someone's opinion. 

But in this case you might note that what I said  are actually facts -  Heck's approach  does annoy me, I've checked and  can confirm it.  And it's fairly clear from the posts it annoys other people too. There are different ways of doing things.  I didn't need to check that one. it's obvious.   I am also annoyed at the owners for Heck doing it this way - checked with myself and can confirm.    

Non-facts =  I've claimed that I'm right about these things,  and I requested a hug.   You've made those bits up.