Lerner reasoning re the Financial Fair Play rules .

[Villa'Zawg]

I'm going to ask Santa for an Aston Villa one.

[TheSandman]

It is lovely. I too would like to see an analysis from our perspective in terms of our capabilities to adapt to the new rules.

Interesting that Alex made direct reference to FFP in his presser today.

[garyfouroaks]

The andersred blog, although compiled by a Man U fan is sound, and completes an authoratative comparison of us,Liverpool, Spurs, Manu/City, Arsenal Spurs.It also shows why we have some cost cutting to do:
http://andersred.blogspot.com/2011/04/financial-fair-play-crunching-numbers.html

[Iago]

Does anyone believe Randy is going to try and upgrade certain elements of VP to increase revenue?

[dave.woodhall]

Does anyone believe Randy is going to try and upgrade certain elements of VP to increase revenue?

Yes.

[Greg N'Ash]

Nope, you can't increase revenue significantly without success on the field. Without spending money you don't get success on the field. Platini's Catch22 to ensure another 100 years of the same clubs winning everything.

[Louzie0]

yes Greg but that's without taking the development of Aston Church into a, 'bells are ringing Villa experience' and Aston Hall into a, 'Villa mediaeval (I know, I know) banqueting and jousting with Jane Austen experience' into account.  Whatever floats our boat with FIFA, let's go for it!

Actually think that the yoof development at Bodymoor will be very important in this context.

[AV82EC]

The andersred blog, although compiled by a Man U fan is sound, and completes an authoratative comparison of us,Liverpool, Spurs, Manu/City, Arsenal Spurs.It also shows why we have some cost cutting to do:
http://andersred.blogspot.com/2011/04/financial-fair-play-crunching-numbers.html

Interesting that.  Basically the income from Commercial activities is whats stopping us competing with Citeh/Spurs, and the fact our expenses have got out of kilter with our income.  As was suspected under Doug and not improved much under Lerner we are light years behind the others in the commercial income area and are struggling to catch up.  This is where Faulkner really needs to pull his finger out IMO over the next 2 seasons.

[Macho Man Randy Savage]

The andersred blog, although compiled by a Man U fan is sound, and completes an authoratative comparison of us,Liverpool, Spurs, Manu/City, Arsenal Spurs.It also shows why we have some cost cutting to do:
http://andersred.blogspot.com/2011/04/financial-fair-play-crunching-numbers.html

Interesting that.  Basically the income from Commercial activities is whats stopping us competing with Citeh/Spurs, and the fact our expenses have got out of kilter with our income.  As was suspected under Doug and not improved much under Lerner we are light years behind the others in the commercial income area and are struggling to catch up.  This is where Faulkner really needs to pull his finger out IMO over the next 2 seasons.

It's an area I thought we would do much better at when Randy took over.

[Concrete John]

It's an area I thought we would do much better at when Randy took over.

I think we've improved, but there was and still is a lot of catching up to do.  We also suffer from an image problem as nobody expects us to really achieve anything or sign the glamorous players. 

[cheltenhamlion]

Is it time for me to dust off the M5 corridor argument again?

[Fuse]

When you look at the figures it is glaringly obvious that we are miles behind in the commercial revenues and will never compete with the matchday revenues that Arsenal get etc.

I also believe that we will never catch up commercially if we don't improve our image. Being branded a 'selling club' whilst every club is in a similar boat makes me mad, our image with the press is awful and all of this could be improved if we had a well qualified football person on the baord to firstly improve relations with the press and make us be seen to be more communciative. We also need someone who can help us be more creative commercially. We are improving in that area but there is so much we could do better.

[mazrimsbruv]

The likelihood of Paul Tomkins's wife having a full and satisfying marital sex life can be expressed as follows:

IRG (Inherent Rampant Geekishness) * SHLCS (Stephen Hawking-Like Conversation Skills) Minus TSAK (Time Spent at Keyboard) = Zero

[Clark W Griswold]

As far as I'm concerned, the new rules are just the same as it ever was. The clubs who are already in the CL will have larger revenue streams and therefore greater possibility of buying the players to maintain their position. The clubs outside the CL will not have such revenue and so will not be able to break into the exclusive Gentleman's club. It is for this reason that we always hit a glass ceiling everytime we get close. There's only two ways to break this. 1. Go all Man City on it and spend fractions of a billion on buying superstars and prima donnas to smash through OR 2. Build your club up by consistently unearthing many future superstars, selling them to the mega rich clubs and reinvesting the proceeds. If you can do this consistently then you can develop the critical mass of players needed to break through.

We know option 1 is beyond us (and will probably be beyond everyone when the new rules come in), so we have to go for option 2. To achieve this we need a manger who is well connected and has a top level scouting network, which for me makes it all the more odd that the club went for McLeish. He has no real history of taking this approach and this is what worries me about him.

In my opinion the primary focus of the manager of Aston Villa should be on player development and scouting. Of course we need to keep an eye on results and football quality, but I do not think the objectives are mutually exclusive. Maybe we need to go the Spurs route and at least have a temporary DOF to find the talent, with a coach looking after the first team. Again I know this model is not favoured in the UK, but had we appointed McLeish supported by a DOF I would feel a lot better about the appointment. I just don't see what it achieves bar ensuring PL survival, and he doesn't even have the greatest of records with that!

Good post apart from the DoF bit. We just need good quality and far reaching scouts and need to build up a reputation for giving youngsters a chance.

[David_Nab]

Football more than it's ever been is about money this fair rule is nothing but a way to stop rich people buying a club and pumping funds in to push the club forward.Of course you could say that was unfair ,and certainly watching what has happened at Man city it's easy to think well thats's not fair.

This new rule prohibts that but the downside is that it protects the established champions league clubs.They are starting with something like £30mil for being in CL plus the extra sponsorship they will no doubt get.Without someone pumping cash into the club how can anyone else compete.

UEFA created a monster with the champions league and this new rule just makes it worse.They might as well just create a european league and leave the rest of us alone