It's that time of year again!

[pauliewalnuts]

So, I say that the accounts are interesting in terms of assessing the performance of the management but you'll get no better picture of the club's vision except their intent to offer their customers a lower grade of football product.

The only thing we can tell is that the club is losing income, running at a loss and the customers are not happy.

All signs of poor management and a failing business.

Exactly right on all three points.  Their first strategy in the "five year plan" was to achieve Champions League football, but they went about it entirely in the wrong way, giving virtyually all of the power at the club to one man.

It's telling that as the losses started to rack up, that Krulak was on here and other places saying that the sending and losses were all expected and planned for.

When it became clear that this was in fact not the case, they then went into panic mode, sold all of the saleable assets and basically stopped pretending that we could compete on an even keel with even mid-ranking clubs in the Premier League.

While I think it is fair to say, for most of the time, the willingness to make the money available was there, where we went wrong was in absolutely nobody at the club having a long term plan or vision of what we were trying to do.

It was "get into the champions league", but that's not really a plan, that's an objective.

Clearly, O'Neill's running of the entire club had two effects.

Firstly, it hid the fact that that rest of the management were clueless. When they did try to impose some order, MON saw off their appointments - Cunnah, FitzGerald, people who didn't last very long at all. When we finally did get a new bloke in, he was totally unqualified to do the job.

Look at who the likes of Man City and Chelsea got in when they started spending big money. People from other clubs, or from the likes of Nike.

What did we get? Someone who'd been running a call centre in Chester.

Secondly, MON calling all the shots meant that everything was done to his taste. Lerner seems to have spent four years just saying yes to requests for money, which is all fine and dandy, but what would then happen when the manager didn't want to do it anymore? What happened was we found out just how shit-or-bust and short term everything had been.

Ageing, crap players on huge deals. A squad of players either tutored in, or tailor made for, playing a somewhat archaic form of football.

Even worse, though, we found out just what a mess the finances were. It's all well and good for people to say "yeah, but nobody complained about the money when we were spending a fortune on players", but the fact is, we didn't know the full mess of the finances.

What's more, on the occasion that anyone dared to mention this, or - god forbid - the wage bill, General Krulak would gently patronise them and tell them "don't worry about the money, we know what we're doing".

So what happens when things go really wrong? They disappear from the dialogue with the fans faster than a rat up a drainpipe, and we find out that, actually, the finances were totally, totally fucked. So fucked that we had to retrench way too fast and ended up where we are now.

Those who want to convince themselves he was taking money out of the club are totally, totally wrong - you can't argue with the money Randy he has made available, but the way it has been managed over six years at the club has been nothing short of horrendous.

It should be really, really difficult to spend the sort of money we have since 2006 and end up largely exactly where we started - at the arse end of the table, skint, and with a squad that is nowhere near strong enough - except now with a mountain od debt.

Good stewardship is not entirely about spunking money into the club all the time, it is also about managing the business, and on that level, we have been a laughable mess.

[Risso]

Excellent post Paulie.  The brutal truth is that after 6 and a bit years of Lerner, we have accumulated losses of £165m AND are in the last chance saloon in the Premier League.  One or the other could be excused, but both together sums up the sorry tale you've told above.

[ROBBO]

There are players bought that left  most supporters shaking there heads in disbelief, when you look at the sheer waste of money over four years it makes me angry. Today the same problems are there, we are a rudderless ship with no-one in control and the only plan is to cut costs. Lerner has to take most of the blame as he has overall control, some of the millions he spent should have gone towards getting the right staff in to run the place.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Some good points there, Paulie but you fail to mention one factor that must have had an huge impact on all boardroom decisions, that being the global financial crisis. Whilst we don't fully understand the impact it had on Randy Lerner, we do know that MBNA was merged into Bank of America and payment was made in both cash and shares. We also know that Bank of America nearly collapsed and were snapped up by Merrill Lynch in 2008.

It's all well and good having a go at the General and like you I do recall him telling us that loses had been planned for, so not to worry but as I've mentioned, it was a whole new ball game after 2008.

[pauliewalnuts]

Some good points there, Paulie but you fail to mention one factor that must have had an huge impact on all boardroom decisions, that being the global financial crisis. Whilst we don't fully understand the impact it had on Randy Lerner, we do know that MBNA was merged into Bank of America and payment was made in both cash and shares. We also know that Bank of America nearly collapsed and were snapped up by Merrill Lynch in 2008.

It's all well and good having a go at the General and like you I do recall him telling us that loses had been planned for, so not to worry but as I've mentioned, it was a whole new ball game after 2008.

True, but the spending went way past 2008.

Plus, it is not just about the money spent, it is the way it was managed - ie not at all, by the looks of it.

[pauliewalnuts]

There are players bought that left  most supporters shaking there heads in disbelief, when you look at the sheer waste of money over four years it makes me angry.

Who remembers pelty on here dropping the fact that Heskey was the highest paid player at the club?

That's Emile Heskey, who was nudging 32 when we threw a 3.5 year deal at him.

That's an example of the sort of dreadful decision making we've engaged in.

There's nothing wrong with shirking players with no future value and buying wisely so that you'll have sell on potential - even Spurs do that. My problem currently is that, we seem to have realised that now, but we're doing it on far too large a scale, too quickly.

[eamonn]

Forking out millions on hiring and firing/mutually parting (with) O'Neill, Houllier, McLeish and their backroom teams pisses me off far more than the likes of Beye, Sidwell and Heskey stewing on the bench or even Bent and Given doing the same now. At least those players would contribute if they could.

We've been incredibly wreckless with contracts and continuously stung in having to honour them suggesting we didn't have much foresight when drafting them. The board...whoever they are, need a lesson or two in negotiation.

[peter w]

Who did themwhen O'Neill was here? Him or the CEO?

[Trinitymiddle]

Some stats from the accounts that show how badly run the club is:

Cost of hiring and firing AM, GH and MON in last 2 years : £18m

% of wages to turnover: 87%

Total wage bill at Aston Villa FC: £70m

Total wage bil at Swansea FC: £35m

Every time the wage bill gets reduced the income falls, meaning a our wages are unhealthily high as a proportion of turnover.

[Chico Hamilton III]

Cost of hiring and firing AM, GH and MON in last 2 years : £18m

That was the income from Ashley Young's transfer well spent then?

[Risso]

We haven't mentioned Spurs for a while, and we'll never tempt VD back if that isn't rectified.

For 2011, their wage bill was £91m compared to ours of £83m.  VD should be glad that we're finally paying less than them, it's just a shame how it's been achieved, ie they're still knocking around the top 4, while we're more concerned with the bottom 4.

[eamonn]

Pay more wages = get better results...isn't that the maxim for modern football? Nice to see we're breaking the mould.

[Concrete John]

We haven't mentioned Spurs for a while, and we'll never tempt VD back if that isn't rectified.

For 2011, their wage bill was £91m compared to ours of £83m.  VD should be glad that we're finally paying less than them, it's just a shame how it's been achieved, ie they're still knocking around the top 4, while we're more concerned with the bottom 4.

£8m a year is about 2-3 top players.  Spurs are abviously more than 2-3 players better than us.  So it just goes to show it's all about how the money is spent.  And if you take those 2-3 players and also have our higher earners contributing as befits their salary, then would be that far off them?   

[glasses]

Who did themwhen O'Neill was here? Him or the CEO?

I don't think anyone really knows the answer to that.

I've mentioned on here before that before Faulkner was appointed CEO he had been working in a role within the club which was to do with liasing with agents and being involved with players transfers. It was to give O'Neill more time to focus on playing matters. Someone I know had spoken with Faulkner and another important Villa bod in the August of 08/09 season. Faulkner told him that was the main chunk of his role within the club at that time. He became CEO later on.

 

[tomd2103]

We haven't mentioned Spurs for a while, and we'll never tempt VD back if that isn't rectified.

For 2011, their wage bill was £91m compared to ours of £83m.  VD should be glad that we're finally paying less than them, it's just a shame how it's been achieved, ie they're still knocking around the top 4, while we're more concerned with the bottom 4.

£8m a year is about 2-3 top players.  Spurs are abviously more than 2-3 players better than us.  So it just goes to show it's all about how the money is spent.  And if you take those 2-3 players and also have our higher earners contributing as befits their salary, then would be that far off them?

That's one of the biggest problems - the big earners who should be the backbone of the team just haven't contributed this season.  I'd say in each area of the team, the following are by far and away the highest earners:

GK - Given
DF - Dunne
MF - Ireland
ST - Bent

When you add in Hutton, Warnock, N'Zogbia and Gabby, I reckon you are talking well over £400,000 pw for a group of players who have contributed hardly anything.