AGM - Protest

[Witton Warrior]

When you have an owner wanting to sell what can a protest achieve? Perhaps it might make one or two of the protesters feel a bit better but the following day we will still be in exactly the same position. It is the equivalent of going round to your neighbours house who has a For Sale sign in the garden and demanding that he sell it.

That's my overall take on it as well. He wants to sell and we know he wants to sell. The main thing is that he sells to the right people.

That said, if people feel strongly enough to protest then fine. Not everyone will want to though and that's fine too.

Agree Clampy - we know he wants to sell and neither he nor we have any control over that outcome - protests will make fans feel better (including me) but are soporifics

[Chris Harte]

Having thought about this, any protest need not be complex.

As much as its been stated that Lerner wants to sell (to be honest, I've read conflicting quotes from the board about how motivated or not he actually is to sell) and that any protest would be meaningless, and as much as the board spend time on the fora and so know the discontent amongst the support, it is natural that the support want to do something, anything.

The simplest think to do is for people (as many as are motivated) to use a white A4 sheet with a question on it in bold, black, clear lettering:

Where's Randy?
When will we win again?
Who is our leader?

Anything that the holder of an A4 sheet wants to ask, hold it up after that outsized flag has passed over our heads before kick off. Hold it up for only a minute or two, up until kick off. It won't achieve anything in truth, but at least you'd have done *something* to indicate that you're not happy with the current position.

[Risso]

I have met Fox a few times now and can assure they are very much aware of (and in agreement with) our issues over how the club has been run for many years. Whether you rate Fix or not, he at least is trying to put in place the structure we should have had from day one.

Thanks for the post Stu.  Just to pick you up on that one point, Fox may say that he's aware of the problems, but it seems very much from the outside that since Fox came in, he's turned a bad situation into an absolutely desperate one.  When you strip it back, a Premier League football club is a fairly straight forward business.  You have a captive audience base, and a customer in Sky who guarantee you 75% of an extremely hefty income.  The main things you have to get right from an ownership perspective are:

Pick the right manager
Support him with the cash for buying the right players and/or developing an academy
Have a philosophy as to how you want the club to grow, and most importantly, stay in the Premier League!

Now, ignoring the stuff that happened before Fox, since he arrived we've:

Given Lambert a new contract after winning three games
Dispensed with him and given a talentless chancer like Sherwood the job
Put together some awful transfer committee, the combined talents of which decided that replacing Benteke with Gestede would be a good idea
Replaced a typically British manager in Sherwood with a continental one in Garde
Allowed Garde to continue with virtually no support staff
Come out with some absolute crap in the media about "things only being bad if you look at the table" and "we're building something special here".

If he HAS got some big plans to improve things, he'd do well to communicate them, as from where I'm sat he's the latest in a line of poor Lerner appointments, who is making things up as he goes along.

[Risso]

When you have an owner wanting to sell what can a protest achieve? Perhaps it might make one or two of the protesters feel a bit better but the following day we will still be in exactly the same position. It is the equivalent of going round to your neighbours house who has a For Sale sign in the garden and demanding that he sell it.

That's my overall take on it as well. He wants to sell and we know he wants to sell. The main thing is that he sells to the right people.

That said, if people feel strongly enough to protest then fine. Not everyone will want to though and that's fine too.

Agree Clampy - we know he wants to sell and neither he nor we have any control over that outcome - protests will make fans feel better (including me) but are soporifics

By right people the only thing Lerner would care about is if they've got the asking price.  I think he'd snap the hand off Kim Jong Un if he ponied up £150m.

[amfy]

The question I think needs answering is what are the contingency plans being put in place for our Championship season?
How do they plan to get us promoted?

This is the crux for me now too. We all want Lerner to sell, none more so than Randy himself, but planning for next season must start now. No idiotic short term, high wage purchases with relegation clauses, that ship has sailed.

We have a window next season to get ths right, we cannot waste it due to poor planning and head in the sand decisions again.  I won't hold my breath............,

For me this is the difficult question for Fox etc  because it is asking them what they are planning to do - something they can be held to (or at least repeated back to them) - what has been has been and we have no way of holding them to account whatever we may wish to believe

Therefore Mr Fox what are your plans and how are the fans factored into that on an involved basis (not just turning up and paying money)?

A year ago he was talking about establishing a football style which doesn't change with a change of manager. Something like you see at Southampton or Swansea - so a change of manager doesn't mean a 'back to square one' as a new approach beds in. I think I'd like to know how this lines up with the progression through Lambert, Sherwood, Garde.

As for protest, I'm just struggling to see how rioting fans make a club that is up for sale easier to sell. When people say we used to protest against Ellis and they can't understand where that energy has gone, for me at least it's that Ellis did go, but look what we ended up with. The are worse Chairman out there than Randy Lerner (and that isn't exactly meant as a complimentary defence of him), and I think I have just learn't to be careful what I wish for. I don't know if that's just me, or if others feel the same and that is why there isn't the movement for protest.

[Glenn Peen]

#PrayForLipsil

Oh fuckoff

Your next post will be an apology, won't it?

Glenn Peen - I am sorry i was abusive to you.

I offer an apology to someone who rarely posts but takes the opportunity to take the piss despite me trying to make a point about so-called "enhanced security." This on top of one of the mod team making glib statements about internal cavity searches in response to me making a point, although I agree it was off topic somewhat.

And while my action was not appropriate I will point out that in over ten thousand posts going back over a decade I have never told any one to fuck off before on this forum, despite having the opportunity to do so.

Now maybe we ought to get back to protests.

Thanks for the apology, Chris Harte - I'm slightly disturbed that I'm the only person you've said rude words to in a decade. I regularly swear at people, including that man from Central News and Barry Scott from the Cillit Bang adverts.

Also, don't take things personally. I wasn't - as you described - 'taking the piss'. I simply felt for the poor Lipsil. It seemed a shame that the little tin chap might be blown up, which is why I wrote #PrayForLipsil.

Life is to be enjoyed, not suffered. Remember that, Chris Harte.

As for protests, I'd go dirty. All over Fox's car.

[cheltenhamlion]

I have met Fox a few times now and can assure they are very much aware of (and in agreement with) our issues over how the club has been run for many years. Whether you rate Fix or not, he at least is trying to put in place the structure we should have had from day one.

Thanks for the post Stu.  Just to pick you up on that one point, Fox may say that he's aware of the problems, but it seems very much from the outside that since Fox came in, he's turned a bad situation into an absolutely desperate one.  When you strip it back, a Premier League football club is a fairly straight forward business.  You have a captive audience base, and a customer in Sky who guarantee you 75% of an extremely hefty income.  The main things you have to get right from an ownership perspective are:

Pick the right manager
Support him with the cash for buying the right players and/or developing an academy
Have a philosophy as to how you want the club to grow, and most importantly, stay in the Premier League!

Now, ignoring the stuff that happened before Fox, since he arrived we've:

Given Lambert a new contract after winning three games
Dispensed with him and given a talentless chancer like Sherwood the job
Put together some awful transfer committee, the combined talents of which decided that replacing Benteke with Gestede would be a good idea
Replaced a typically British manager in Sherwood with a continental one in Garde
Allowed Garde to continue with virtually no support staff
Come out with some absolute crap in the media about "things only being bad if you look at the table" and "we're building something special here".

If he HAS got some big plans to improve things, he'd do well to communicate them, as from where I'm sat he's the latest in a line of poor Lerner appointments, who is making things up as he goes along.

Sherwood is very much on him. And he most certainly doesn't help himself with some of his utterances, which might be an effort to reassure us, but come across as bollocks when seen in conjunction with the chaos at the club.

However, because he has got some things wrong, doesn't mean he it is fair to blame him for everything.

He is responsible for leaving Lambert in post for too long (apparently because he had some sympathy that the running of the club had not helped him out) but not his contract. That was well under way before he arrived.

And can we debunk the transfer committee thing. I know bullshit when I hear it and what he told us about transfers before the Arsenal game was on the level.

Whether he has the wherewithal to turn this round then that might be a different matter but he isn't the pillock he is painted as. It is more a question as to whether he adds much more than a bit of business acumen and being a polished performer.

Like I say, the Trust AGM will be interesting to see how he performs when pulled up on stuff that he has demonstrably got wrong.

[Malandro]

The most you will get from Fox, which I can understand, is that 'lessons need to be learnt'.
That's the last line when things have gone dramatically tits up.

[Stu]

What is a protest going to achieve?

"LERNER OUT!"

"Er, I'm trying to sell the club already."

"UMMMMM....."

[Loxton01]

When I started this post I was looking for the AGM as a potential opportunity to make an organised co-ordinated approach to the event rather than to let the club be able to get away with answering some very difficult questions. In respect to protests I agree this will not work without a lot of co-ordination - anger gets you nowhere - however sitting on our hands achieves the same result.

Randy Lerner biggest mistake right now is a lack of interest and his continued silence. That spreads throughout the club and has resulted in the malaise we all experience right now including us as fans. He has spent a lot of money and quite frankly has been let down by mismanagement by others but ultimately he employed them and therefore he is responsible.

Having slept on things I cannot accept this squad is worse than the Watford, Norwich, Sunderland, Bournemouth teams and isn't far behind the likes of WBA, Swansea, Newcastle and even dare I say it Leicester. Watford bought more players in this summer and yet are flying high whilst Bournemouth spent very little lost many of there best players (Wilson aka Benteke) and yet are still fighting hard in the bottom six. Why should we just accept how bad we are?

Mr Lerner is the reason we should be a bottom six club but the mismanagement throughout the club is the reason we are sitting on eight points and cut adrift.

In the summer we spent much more than the promoted clubs and others but yet we are atrocious. For me this is because we bought players the previous manager did not really want and we have many players who lack hunger discipline, confidence and generally do not care enough for the club.

Garde was not the manager to bring the much needed discipline needed to get the best out of these players and give them confidence. The players are much better than they are showing and for me this is down to the manager and the players themselves.

We are relegated and this must not be allowed to happen again (if we ever get promoted again) and it is now an opportunity to change the setup of this great club.

Firstly questions need to be asked of how has this happened:-

1. Can the club confirm how much was spent on players in the summer? Were the French players bought at the values quoted in the media or are a number based on increased value dependent on performance (This would then give a clear idea of how much was spent in the summer - rather than the conjecture of circa 50m).

2. Given the performance of the club on the pitch and the number of players bought in the summer who are playing if we are relegated who is responsible for the purchase of these players and will anyone be held account.

3. Can the club confirm if any of the players are on a reduction in wages if relegation occurs.

4. Can the club confirm the theory of employing the current manager who has no premier league experience - rather than available managers who have a wealth of experience in the current league.

5. Given the time again what would the club have done different in the summer and since to try to  ensure this situation does not happen again.

What next

1. Can the club confirm why a new Chairman still has not been appointed

2. Why do the club not have a footballing expert on the board - ex player etc?

3. Since the summer there has not been any announcements on the sale of the club. Why is communication so poor - do the fans not deserve a right to be updated?

4. Given the performance on the pitch can the club insist on the players making a gesture towards the cost of travel/tickets to the rest of the seasons away games. Also do you think it is acceptable that on many occasions the team leave the pitch before thanking the away support.

5. With relegation a certainty can you advise what measures the Club are putting into place for the Championship. Will many of the players be sold?

There are questions there that Im sure wont be answered - but perhaps we can arrange many to email the same questions to Fox, Lee Preece from next week with others. We could agree 10 key questions and if say 100 of us email then surely they will get the hint?

It is not about rioting, anger it is about us as fans holding the club to account and demanding some answers and commit that the wrongs will be eventually righted

[dave.woodhall]

We protested against Ellis - and all those marches, banners, meetings, leaflets, chants, moved his departure forward not one second and that was when we kidded ourselves that there was someone out there who would cut the shackles and send us soaring to the heavens because, well, because there just was. We are Aston Villa so it stands to reason. Now, things are very different not least because you're looking at the best part of £250 million just for starters.

[aj2k77]

How committed are we to finding a buyer?

We hear different utterances depending on how badly we've done the previous few months. Couple of good results and we hear that he's motivated and enjoying owning us again. End of a poor season and it's Randy Loser wants to sell again.

It seems to me like he's as haphazard about selling the club as he is in every other aspect of running a football club and if there's a way to scupper and fuck up selling a club then this is the pillock to find it. He's not a business man and he's not a sports club owner, he's a daddy's boy who got given a load of money and plays at doing things.

[Witton Warrior]

When I started this post I was looking for the AGM as a potential opportunity to make an organised co-ordinated approach to the event rather than to let the club be able to get away with answering some very difficult questions. In respect to protests I agree this will not work without a lot of co-ordination - anger gets you nowhere - however sitting on our hands achieves the same result.

Sorry to snip all your well-made points Loxton1 but just to say I agree that we need to agree some of the questions otherwise there will be duplication (there needs to be room for individuals to ask as well)  - you have covered the points I would like asked - maybe members can ask pre-arranged questions? Will anyone be taking notes? I shall try but my scribble tends to be indecipherable even to me afterwards.

[kippaxvilla2]

The big difference between Lerner and Ellis is, some people wanted Ellis out, he had no intention of leaving, so they protested. Some people want Lerner out, so does he. So what does a protest achieve? Sing "we want Lerner out" and he'll join in.

Even if it achieves nothing the fans still have pride in their club. Better than just sitting there doing nothing.

Any protest needs to be well thought out and more targeted.  Singing we want Lerner out when he apparently wants out won't achieve anything. Perhaps encouraging him to continue to be the so called custodian of the club might be better. 

Starting with stop employing utterly under qualified people to run a multi million pound business who's raison detre is to provide entertainment and results on a football pitch.  Leaving it to rot and die a slow, painful death is not being a custodian of anything.

[kippaxvilla2]

We protested against Ellis - and all those marches, banners, meetings, leaflets, chants, moved his departure forward not one second and that was when we kidded ourselves that there was someone out there who would cut the shackles and send us soaring to the heavens because, well, because there just was. We are Aston Villa so it stands to reason. Now, things are very different not least because you're looking at the best part of £250 million just for starters.

The £ sign protest had an effect didn't it?