Mistakes

[brian green]

If a handbook was in the course of being written setting out the dos and don'ts of Premiership football club ownership Villa examples would feature prominently.

Don'ts

Don't buy a club, put money into it then change your mind and cut off the money.

Don't appoint a manager with a three word brief "Save us money".

Don't allow the signing of players for large transfer fees and large wages and long contracts and not play them.

Don't behave like a recluse.   Communicate with the people who matter.

Don't allow the sale of all your best players without replacing them with players of equal or superior ability.

Don't appoint executives to run your club who have no grasp of or feel for football matters.

Don't appoint to ultra stressful jobs people with heart problems.

Don't use young and potentially good home produced players to bolster an inadequate squad and ruin them in relegation dog fights for months on end.

Don't listen if somebody tells you important things can be done on the cheap.  In this world you get what you pay for.

Don't forget that the important reason for the January transfer window is to enable clubs to give themselves a fighting chance of turning their seasons around, not for proving points about saving money.

Don't ever, ever assume that getting back into the Premiership is easy.   It is not and the longer you stay out of it the harder it gets.

Dos

Do listen to the supporters, they are not as stupid as you are led to believe they are nor as fickle.

[danlanza]

Fantastic. I will add one to the list.
 Never give up on the Manager or the Players before the season is over. Keep faith in our policy and we will get better. Top six next season, no doubt, fucking easy lads and lasses. UTV

[olaftab]

One good "don't" in there IMO on CEO appointment.
Name me a club that has listened to supporters with respect to the team matters and football policy and succeeded?

[Can Gana Be Bettered!?!?]

Bit harsh for criticising him on banging in a load of money to give MON the best chance of making us top 4. He obviously thought it could happen (which it nearly did), but it didn't, and now he's having to make some cutbacks.

As for the fans, I'd argue that a good amount of them are as stupid as they're led to believe.

[Risso]

Don't let football managers spend money without working out if you can afford it.
Don't tell the fans that three years of losses are all part of the plan.
Don't appoint a ginger customer services manager from a credit card call centre in Chester to run things.
Don't get your dad's mate in the army to be your spokesman on websites, and if you do, don't let him tell the proles that he'll be there through thick and thin, only for him to turn tail and leg it as soon as things get tricky.
Don't design your own badge, you aren't good at it.
Don't bleat on like a love sick teenager about a letter you got from another club's manager, it makes you look like you're in one of those photo stories from girls' comics in the 1970s.
Don't forget that if you've inherited a billion, and are going through a mid life crisis, American sports cars are a cheaper penis substitute than sporting clubs.
Don't forget that you said the following: "“There have been plenty of custodians of Aston Villa since 1874 and if I can’t make it work, I will do what the others did, move on and let someone else try"
Don't forget to buy a defender this Janu...whoops, too late.

[Legion]

A classic alongside Kipling's 'If'.

[TheMalandro]

Don't have your tour guides talking 70% of the time about corporate facilities, its kind of annoying when the footballing side is being neglected.
I have no criticism of the tour guides, they were fantastic. I had Mr Ansell (Forget his first name) on mine and he was brilliant.

[Legion]

Mark?

[TheMalandro]

Mark?

He said he was no relation of the old board member or part of the brewery family. Nice guy though, talked to him quite a bit outside of the tour.

[Ross]

Fantastic. I will add one to the list.
 Never give up on the Manager or the Players before the season is over. Keep faith in our policy and we will get better. Top six next season, no doubt, fucking easy lads and lasses. UTV

Clever. Which division?

[eastie]

Fantastic. I will add one to the list.
 Never give up on the Manager or the Players before the season is over. Keep faith in our policy and we will get better. Top six next season, no doubt, fucking easy lads and lasses. UTV

You can not really say never give up on the manager during the season - many clubs have survived purely on the fact they have realised they have the wrong manager and addressed the problem to survive - if something is clearly not right you fix it !

[Jimbo]

Don't run a grand old sporting institution like Aston Villa into the ground, forcing its manager to publicly admit it cannot compete with the likes of Stoke City.

[Mister E]

Fantastic. I will add one to the list.
 Never give up on the Manager or the Players before the season is over. Keep faith in our policy and we will get better. Top six next season, no doubt, fucking easy lads and lasses. UTV

You can not really say never give up on the manager during the season - many clubs have survived purely on the fact they have realised they have the wrong manager and addressed the problem to survive - if something is clearly not right you fix it !

What? Like Forest, you mean?

[UK Redsox]

Don't bail on a competition at the Quarter Final stage because the team has the vague possibility of being in with an outside chance of maybe finishing fourth in another competition.

(If I was to pick a specific day that things started to go wrong, I'd go with that one)

[Risso]

Don't bail on a competition at the Quarter Final stage because the team has the vague possibility of being in with an outside chance of maybe finishing fourth in another competition.

(If I was to pick a specific day that things started to go wrong, I'd go with that one)

Don't buy Emile Heskey just because Michael Owen said he liked playing with him ten years ago.  (another specific point when things went down the shitter).