Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: brian green on April 26, 2012, 08:50:02 PM
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It is almost impossible to overstate the damage done to Aston Villa in the last 21 months.
During the time I have been following the Villa there have been terrible blows we have had to suffer but there has been nothing which compares with the series of hits we have taken recently. We have gone from being a respected club of note with the name of a children's hospice on our shirt to being a complete basket case which promotes a chinese gambling organization.
The first blow was the departure of O'Neill. My own personal opinion is that it was premeditated and timed to cause the club as much damage as possible. O'Neill is not the sort of man to do things on a whim. I believe that there must have been clear signals that all was not well with him and the directors failed to pick up any of the storm warnings. Doug Ellis's spies would have had HDE informed of every straw in the wind. Our directors were either naive or incompetent or both.
The second blow was that the club had to take a very large, undisclosed financial hit for its treatment of O'Neill without any public word ever being uttered in defence of the club. Of all the hits, this is the one which pains me most. The club was made to look ridiculous and toothless.
The third blow was the loss of Houllier. The appointment of a man with heart problems into a massively stressful situation exacerbated by rampant player power disruption left behind O'Neill's tenure was a ticking timebomb which duly exploded.
The fourth hit was the decision by the owner that the books had to be balanced. No harm in that. Money is money. The damage was caused by the instant change from big spending club with aging players on huge wages and very long contracts to cheap and cheerful club reliant upon cheap home grown players thrown into the deep end prematurely.
The fifth torpedo amidships was the absurd pantomime of attempts to find a replacement for Houllier. It was a public relations cock up of monumental proportions and because it was such a shambles it led to -
Disaster number six namely the appointment of Alex McLeish whose shortcomings and failings have been too well documented for me to elaborate upon them.
The net result of these six whammies is the complete breakdown of trust between the club and its fanbase. The fans have been disregarded on an almost weekly basis and I think it will take years for that trust to be restored.
No more free flags and scarves. Give us proper, open communication about what the club is doing and why it is doing it. If you want to keep the fans, trust them.
If the club can once again start to treat the fans as intelligent responsible adults the healing process can begin. If it is more "Dunne Says Lay Off McLeish" PR bullshit things will never be the same again.
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This thread may get locked or merged, but you've summed the matter up very well there Brian.
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Genting is Malaysian and are worth billions. Fuck me another new thread to discuss the same thing.
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Genting is Malaysian and are worth billions. Fuck me another new thread to discuss the same thing.
yup.......I make this the 25th at least
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Brian's post is excellent, but moderating this board is nigh on impossible right now. I just don't know which way to turn.
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Brian's post is excellent, but moderating this board is nigh on impossible right now. I just don't know which way to turn.
Its like lord of the flies.
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Brian's post is excellent, but moderating this board is nigh on impossible right now. I just don't know which way to turn.
Its like lord of the flies.
Sounds more like 'Lord of The Ring'. 8)
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It's worthy of a thread in isolation IMO, as it charts our decline from a reasonable high point in 2010 (when we were being tipped by the likes of Fergiescum and Wenger as outsiders for the title - as bizarre as that seems now) to the present day. It doesn't just focus on the ineptness of the current patsy.
Must say I don't have a particular problem with the shirt deal though, one of the few things Faulkner has actually got right over the past 21 months.
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Great post Brian. It's been a dizzying fall from grace.
Two years ago we were posting about the need to increase the capacity of Villa Park and what was needed to finally break that hoodoo identified by Graham Taylor all those years ago. That there was something preventing Aston Villa making the next step forward to becoming a giant. We thought one or two new signings, a bigger stadium, better football would do the trick. Two years ago I think we were joint fourth.
Look at us now? Praying the teams below us don't win, over 10,000 empty seats on a weekly basis and looking more and more like a Championship side every week. It's just shocking. It's spectacularly scary just what a mess the club has made of the past 24 months.
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It is a great post Brian. Randy has been shown to be totally out of his depth over the past couple of years. He needs real, top quality, modern thinking football men in at the top advising him. He needs blue chip people who understand the business of football too.
I've got to be honest though, my brain's fried thinking about how Randy has buggered things up. I need Villa positivity just for the next three games...after that, when we have assured ourselves of survival, I hope Randy will take a long hard look at himself and start the process of putting things right.
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This would be of great value if the people in charge read it, if not just another we are fcuk thread
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Brian's post is excellent, but moderating this board is nigh on impossible right now. I just don't know which way to turn.
Its like lord of the flies.
Please don't break my glasses!
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Excellent post Mr Green!
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It's worthy of a thread in isolation IMO, as it charts our decline from a reasonable high point in 2010 (when we were being tipped by the likes of Fergiescum and Wenger as outsiders for the title - as bizarre as that seems now) to the present day. It doesn't just focus on the ineptness of the current patsy.
Must say I don't have a particular problem with the shirt deal though, one of the few things Faulkner has actually got right over the past 21 months.
We probably paid Genting £10m to put their name on our shirt.
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Top post Brian.
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An excellent post
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We have gone from being a respected club of note with the name of a children's hospice on our shirt to being a complete basket case which promotes a chinese gambling organization
It's funny innit? when Lerner took over and we got the Acorns deal I thought nothing symbolised the difference between Lerner and Ellis more than the fact that we used to be sponsored by an online bookies and we moved to a childrens' hospice. "Bright Future" and all that shit
Now I think nothing better symbolises the state we are in than the changing of shirt sponsors to a Casino (Malaysian, by the way, but there you go). And the fact that the value of the deal might just help to recover the transfer fees O'Neill spunked on wasters like Curtis Davies and Steve Sidwell.
I feel as if I've been royally shafted up the arse by O'Neill, Lerner and his highly decorated miltary mouthpiece, Krulak, who patronised us at every opportunity while we ( I include myself) rolled over like puppies for him.
Disillusioned of Deptford
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Brian, I always enjoy your terse, well-argued posts (even if I don't always agree with your views) because they have a fine balance of emotion and logic.
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Just wanted to expand the calculative MON comment further...
If you recall 6 months before he left, Talk Sport broke a story he had walked around the time the liverpool role was vacant if you remember... no smoke without fire and all that, so the bard should have seen it coming!
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so the bard should have seen it coming!
Shakespeare Out!
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... so the bard should have seen it coming!
"Foresooth, my Liege, indeed 'twas predicted in the stars"
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so the bard should have seen it coming!
Shakespeare Out!
Tea on keyboard. Thanks.
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Great post Brian. It certainly echoes a number of my thoughts.
My only comment to add is re your first whammie, as I am still not sure whether MON calculated that he wanted to cause as much damage as possible by walking 5 days before the season kicked off. This is purely because the true events are probably only known to a handful of people and the actions of the board re football matters in the past 18 months have not generated confidence. Off the pitch, they have generally done a great job.
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To describe Genting as "a casino" is a bit like describing Vodafone as "a phone shop".
Don't get me wrong, I can think of lots and lots of things the board have screwed up, but apparently the Genting sponsorship is one of the biggest in the top flight, so I don't really see what there is to criticise them for in that.
If we're going to get sniffy about the fact it's gambling industry related, then maybe we should have been equally sniffy when Randy first turned up, what with his fortune coming from his family owning a company built on entirely on encouraging people to get into debt (and one which was known for being particularly proactive in their snaring of customers).
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It is almost impossible to overstate the damage done to Aston Villa in the last 21 months.
During the time I have been following the Villa there have been terrible blows we have had to suffer but there has been nothing which compares with the series of hits we have taken recently. We have gone from being a respected club of note with the name of a children's hospice on our shirt to being a complete basket case which promotes a chinese gambling organization.
The first blow was the departure of O'Neill. My own personal opinion is that it was premeditated and timed to cause the club as much damage as possible. O'Neill is not the sort of man to do things on a whim. I believe that there must have been clear signals that all was not well with him and the directors failed to pick up any of the storm warnings. Doug Ellis's spies would have had HDE informed of every straw in the wind. Our directors were either naive or incompetent or both.
The second blow was that the club had to take a very large, undisclosed financial hit for its treatment of O'Neill without any public word ever being uttered in defence of the club. Of all the hits, this is the one which pains me most. The club was made to look ridiculous and toothless.
The third blow was the loss of Houllier. The appointment of a man with heart problems into a massively stressful situation exacerbated by rampant player power disruption left behind O'Neill's tenure was a ticking timebomb which duly exploded.
The fourth hit was the decision by the owner that the books had to be balanced. No harm in that. Money is money. The damage was caused by the instant change from big spending club with aging players on huge wages and very long contracts to cheap and cheerful club reliant upon cheap home grown players thrown into the deep end prematurely.
The fifth torpedo amidships was the absurd pantomime of attempts to find a replacement for Houllier. It was a public relations cock up of monumental proportions and because it was such a shambles it led to -
Disaster number six namely the appointment of Alex McLeish whose shortcomings and failings have been too well documented for me to elaborate upon them.
The net result of these six whammies is the complete breakdown of trust between the club and its fanbase. The fans have been disregarded on an almost weekly basis and I think it will take years for that trust to be restored.
No more free flags and scarves. Give us proper, open communication about what the club is doing and why it is doing it. If you want to keep the fans, trust them.
If the club can once again start to treat the fans as intelligent responsible adults the healing process can begin. If it is more "Dunne Says Lay Off McLeish" PR bullshit things will never be the same again.
Well said my friend but be careful as to what you put on here as if you upset "certain people" they hold it against you.
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Give it a rest.
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Well said my friend but be careful as to what you put on here as if you upset "certain people" they hold it against you.
Like the Bellamy Brothers you mean?
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Well said my friend but be careful as to what you put on here as if you upset "certain people" they hold it against you.
I don't think he needs to worry about that WW. As to why, the clue is in the phrase "well said".
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I would add a seventh whammy, the signing of Jenas with no get out clause should he endure a season ending injury as he did, a bread and butter mistake from an incompetent board, no other board in the prem would have made such an elementary error.
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I don't know, if we're going to add bread and butter mistakes I think we'll be up to 700 whammies!
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so the bard should have seen it coming!
Shakespeare Out!
''The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers,
E'en if you didn't actually complete your degree
Thou specky fucker''
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Rewind a couple of years and the prospect of signing Bent, England's no. 9, should have been a seminal moment in our history, he should have been the final piece in the jigsaw to cement our place at the top table of English football again for the next few years. It shows how bad other board decisions have been that the last 21 months have been soo disastrous even though we signed Bent for £18 mill. Selling the rest of the jigsaw off has not helped.
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Once more unto McLeish, dear friends, once more;
or close the draw with our anguished dred.
In defeat there is nothing so becomes this man
As arrogant stillness and stupidity:
But when the blast of boredom blows in our ears
then he imitates the actions of,
tiddles.
Sorry Will.
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Well said my friend but be careful as to what you put on here as if you upset "certain people" they hold it against you.
Like the Bellamy Brothers you mean?
Very good! You certainly let your love flow for brother WW.
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Rewind a couple of years and the prospect of signing Bent, England's no. 9, should have been a seminal moment in our history, he should have been the final piece in the jigsaw to cement our place at the top table of English football again for the next few years. It shows how bad other board decisions have been that the last 21 months have been soo disastrous even though we signed Bent for £18 mill. Selling the rest of the jigsaw off has not helped.
Bent should've been signed under MON. If he'd have been signed at some point in 2009, I believe that would've been the signing to crack the top 4.
Sunderland signed him for I think 12m that summer. 12m to fire us into the champions league or 18m to keep us in the premier league, decide which is good business there. In fairness that summer MON was spending another 30m on a new back 4 (and Habib Beye's retirement fund).
Great post by Brian. I would say one that sticks out time and time again to me is Milner leaving. At the time I thought it was a good deal. 20m and I believed Ireland would be an excellent player for us. In reality Milner was the absolute heartbeat of our team and our central midfield has deteriorated beyond belief since he left.
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We bought Bent because the danger signals were there then, his goals made the difference.To sell his main suppliers and replace them both with one player who is not a supplier is beyong fathoming. Brians just about summed it up but i would say that the trouble really started when Lerner got rid of all the footballing people and replaced them with friendly lackeys,until he sees sense and brings good footballing minds back to the club we are stuffed.