Big Clubs Ranked Article

[dave.woodhall]

I could (and have) write chapter and verse on how we wasted the period from 1990-2002, when we had the whole of middle England to ourselves and did nothing to capitalise on it. We'd have coaches arriving from all over the country full of kids who wanted to watch a Premier League game, yet we'd never try to get them back. There were tens of thousands of people who would call themselves Villa fans but never came to a match and we didn't encourage them to. You couldn't get a Villa shirt in Worcester, you couldn't buy a scarf in Stratford. I used to spend more time chasing up lapsed H&V subscriptions than Villa did with non-renewed season tickets. Our marketing team were more bothered about clamping down on unofficial souvenirs than selling our own - I've said before about how the biggest seller of Villa gear outside Birmingham was taken to court for inadvertently stocking something that was borderline illegal, so he stopped taking anything from the club. We were a corner shop when other clubs were a chain of supermarkets. The only time this changed was the first couple of years of the Lerner regime, and they soon gave up. NSWE have got twenty years to make up, and only then will we be able to say we're a top howevermanyitis club.

[Risso]

I could (and have) write chapter and verse on how we wasted the period from 1990-2002, when we had the whole of middle England to ourselves and did nothing to capitalise on it. We'd have coaches arriving from all over the country full of kids who wanted to watch a Premier League game, yet we'd never try to get them back. There were tens of thousands of people who would call themselves Villa fans but never came to a match and we didn't encourage them to. You couldn't get a Villa shirt in Worcester, you couldn't buy a scarf in Stratford. I used to spend more time chasing up lapsed H&V subscriptions than Villa did with non-renewed season tickets. Our marketing team were more bothered about clamping down on unofficial souvenirs than selling our own - I've said before about how the biggest seller of Villa gear outside Birmingham was taken to court for inadvertently stocking something that was borderline illegal, so he stopped taking anything from the club. We were a corner shop when other clubs were a chain of supermarkets. The only time this changed was the first couple of years of the Lerner regime, and they soon gave up. NSWE have got twenty years to make up, and only then will we be able to say we're a top howevermanyitis club.

Agree with all that. You then have to add in the FPP rules, which mean that to a certain extent the ladder has been pulled up, making it doubly hard.

[Ads]

And we've allowed in that time the Noses, Albion and Wolves to finish above us at varying points, that was the extent of the decay.

I do genuinely feel the rot has been stopped though, but as Risso alludes to, the cracks for you to find purchase in the elite are finite. But, again, with Chelsea in perpetual turmoil  and Arsenal being ran poorly, it shows that crashing through the barrier can be done.

If we had an ounce of this professionalism in 1992, what would we have achieved? Or rather, what wouldn't we have achieved.

[dave.woodhall]

Or 1990, or 1996, or 1998, or 2006. No club ever gets onto the launchpad without taking off as often as we do.

[garyellis]

I think Leicester are a good example of what can be achieved. I appreciate many will say it was a fluke but my god have they made the most of it.
This club now (I would argue this was always the case) has far more potential than Leicester will ever have. For the first time in my lifetime it feels like we are being run professionally from top to bottom. Even under Ron Saunders and then Tony Barton there was in fighting and a lack of a strategy.
The FFP point is not to be ignored but to be taken into account of how we move to the next level.
Anyway I'm enjoying the journey and can't wait to get back to Villa Park.

[olaftab]

Or 1990, or 1996, or 1998, or 2006. No club ever gets onto the launchpad without taking off as often as we do.

Absolutely this. When the opportunity has been there we have flopped about instead of going for the jugular.

[rob_bridge]

Ellis left us in good nick financially, alas it was a decade at least too late.

Gregory and O'Neil had money as much as anyone else in the League for a couple of years and were eerily similar in terms of achievement, or under achievement as we see in hindsight.

 We are just back after a lost decade and need to establish ourselves as a top half club in the next few years and makesure wer give the bigger clubs 3 or 4 beatings across a season so we stay in pundits and viewers minds

[ChicagoLion]

Ellis left us in good nick financially,

How do you work that out?

[LeeB]

Ellis left us in good nick financially,

How do you work that out?

Ellis left himself in good nick financially, we were flogging the Serpentine and refusing staff claiming cups of coffee on expenses.

Mr Aston Villa indeed. I'm sorry, I know he's passed on and we're in great place now, but I'm still incredibly bitter towards him.

[Moonraker]

Ellis could have sold for more but accepted a lower offer from Lerner as he believed Lerner had the best interests of the club at heart.

[Percy McCarthy]

Ellis could have sold for more but accepted a lower offer from Lerner as he believed Lerner had the best interests of the club at heart.

...said Ellis.

[West Derby Villan]

Ellis could have sold for more but accepted a lower offer from Lerner as he believed Lerner had the best interests of the club at heart.

...said Ellis.

The egotistical corner shop owner !

[dave.woodhall]

Ellis left us in good nick financially, alas it was a decade at least too late.

Gregory and O'Neil had money as much as anyone else in the League for a couple of years and were eerily similar in terms of achievement, or under achievement as we see in hindsight.

 We are just back after a lost decade and need to establish ourselves as a top half club in the next few years and makesure wer give the bigger clubs 3 or 4 beatings across a season so we stay in pundits and viewers minds

Elis left us in such good financial nick that we had, as LeeB said, to sell the Serpentine car park, to a community venture that never traded and had Dave Ismay on its board.

Gregory spent money that came in via flotation (another rip-roaring success for shareholders, provided you owned something like 35% of them) and the NTL deal. By the time Sir Graham returned we were back to being skint again and it was around this time that the England team refused to train at Bodymoor because it wasn't good enough. 

[Sexual Ealing]

I haven't read the thread, or the piece that inspired it, so I'm obviously incredibly well-qualified to comment. It's a fool's errand to try to quantify how 'big' football clubs are. Everyone can feel it but nobody can measure it. Safe to say that Chelsea and West Ham ought to be nowhere in the conversation.

[AV82EC]

Ellis did not leave us in good nick financially. Revenue had reduced in the last season he was in charge. In addition in the previous 13 years since the formation of the Premier League, he had failed to grow both the commercial and matchday income in relation to our rivals sitting on his arse whilst the TV money rolled in which meant the ability to invest money in facilities like VP or Bodymoor or heaven forbid the squad was limited. He left us with no debt but light years behind other clubs in all aspects of how a professional sports team should be run and operated. The corner shop mentality and being the biggest club in the Midlands were enough for him,

Mr Aston Villa my arse, complete and utter charlatan and the very definition of a small time thinking jumped up travel agent.

Yes I am still bitter.