Supporters Trust & Purslow

[Scott Nielsen]

Preece published this on the Brum Mail this morning..

"A spokesman for the Villa Trust commented: “The club’s policy would be more focused on outs for ins with transfers being more self-financing as the club could not rely on the owners - Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens - to continually fund transfers from their own pockets."

This is exactly as it should be, the alternative is to turn into Chelsea/ManCity/PSG and just be a plaything unti lthe owners get bored. Self-sustainability has to be the goal for all clubs.

To be honest I was hoping our owners were up for a bit more of a punt than that.

It may be possible to sustain and elite team once you are there, in all the competitions and filling a 60k stadium, but to bridge that gap whilst balancing the books will be almost impossible.  I think we can say goodye to dreams of Poch and keeping up with Newcastle's progress if thats the philosophy already.

I agree it doesn't shout breaking into the top 7 does it?

I'd be quite happy to be some rich owners plaything. As we have seen with a lot of these Clubs when the owner does get bored theirs always another that wants to do the same again.

Like Xia?

No, because he wasn't rich.

Self-sufficiency is a laudable sentiment though, Paul, I agree. But we are unlikely to win anything again given how the rest of the football world works. I doubt we'll even get to play in Europe again under a self-sufficiency strategy. Disappointing but maybe not so surprising given the low net spend in our recent windows.

[Rory]

Personally, I'd rather never win, or compete to win, anything ever again than follow the Chelsea/Man City model.

The modern, money-based industry that football has become has killed any semblance of competition, and I'd prefer that we go to the wall rather than become part of the cancer that is eating the game alive.

[sid1964]

If the idea of the club owners is to sell to buy, then I would think that each summer that we will need to sell 1 or 2 of our stars! to be able to buy a couple of players - you are not going to be able to buy many players by selling our squad fillers.

You start to sell your better players you are only heading one way, and that is the annual struggle to survive

No top manager is going to come to our club with that policy.

[markeeeebeeee2005]

Sell to buy is fine if you have anything decent to sell. We currently have depreciating assets, I’d say largely down to the coaching.

[simboy]

Surely the key to a “sell to buy” policy has to be underpinned by a strong youth development policy.

We seemed to have cornered the market in local (midlands) talent a few years ago. Not so much now.

Grealish and Chuck (£125 mill for an outlay on Chucky of very little) would appear to be the way, even if it left a bitter taste.

Having identified the potential (I suspect with Grealish) we got the best local scouts in and took in the best young talent from across Europe.

  I’m not sure we have the same drive as we had under Smith/Delaney to do this now. There appears to be a policy shift of buying established peaking (or waning in the case of Courtinho) stars under this regime.

[Abbeyfealeavfc]

Sell to buy is fine if you have anything decent to sell. We currently have depreciating assets, I’d say largely down to the coaching.

I wouldn't say that Emi Martinez was a depreciating asset. He's exactly the type of player our current ceo would have in mind with what appears to be a new transfer model. This wouldn't fill me with confidence of continual progress.

[chrisw1]

Personally, I'd rather never win, or compete to win, anything ever again than follow the Chelsea/Man City model.

The modern, money-based industry that football has become has killed any semblance of competition, and I'd prefer that we go to the wall rather than become part of the cancer that is eating the game alive.

You don't have to go quite to City levels, although Newcastle will and that's another hurdle tp overcome.

But we won't get to filling a 60k stadium and doing it more the Spurs Arsenal or Liverpool way with a one in one out policy.  You need to get there before you can try and be sustainable or close to susrtainable at the top.

[sid1964]

Will we have to wait to August 31st to see how much money we have raised through transfers out of the club to see who we can afford to buy?

If the current academy youngsters is the way forward, we may be waiting quite a few seasons before we see most of them in the first team

I agree there is not a chance of us filling a 50,000 seat stadium regularly if we are in the bottom half of the league.

[ChicagoLion]

Preece published this on the Brum Mail this morning..

"A spokesman for the Villa Trust commented: “The club’s policy would be more focused on outs for ins with transfers being more self-financing as the club could not rely on the owners - Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens - to continually fund transfers from their own pockets."

That sounds like they have thrown the towel in.
Since the new  owners we have had 2 opportunities to push for the Top end of the Table.
1.Build a team around Greasy.
2. Use the Greasy money to build the base of a team to compete for European places.

We blew the Greasy Money, hired Gerrard and now its survival football.

[cdbearsfan]

Surely the key to a “sell to buy” policy has to be underpinned by a strong youth development policy.

We seemed to have cornered the market in local (midlands) talent a few years ago. Not so much now.

Grealish and Chuck (£125 mill for an outlay on Chucky of very little) would appear to be the way, even if it left a bitter taste.

Having identified the potential (I suspect with Grealish) we got the best local scouts in and took in the best young talent from across Europe.

  I’m not sure we have the same drive as we had under Smith/Delaney to do this now. There appears to be a policy shift of buying established peaking (or waning in the case of Courtinho) stars under this regime.

We've still kept on bringing in loads of young talent. You can't bring in under-18s from outside the UK any more but we have been nicking players from "Rangers", Chelsea, Hearts and Albion, off the top of my head.

[Meanwood Villa]

Personally, I'd rather never win, or compete to win, anything ever again than follow the Chelsea/Man City model.

The modern, money-based industry that football has become has killed any semblance of competition, and I'd prefer that we go to the wall rather than become part of the cancer that is eating the game alive.

To be honest it sounds like you need to find another sport to follow. I want Villa to be successful. Not by any means necessary, for example on reflection I think I would walk away if we were taken over by Saudi government or similar, but to be successful we need to spend shitloads of money. To me this is like Lerner again, they've come in and chucked comparatively large amounts of money around, seen it didn't get them where they wanted and jacked it in. If that quote from the trust is true then we are condemned to lower half finishes, at best, for the foreseeable. Grim.

[The Edge]

The one in one out to balance the books policy will only work once we've established ourselves back amongst the very elite of football. Man City bought in Haaland relatatively cheap and sold Gabrielle Jesus in the process. They can be self sustained now but only because the huge investment was made previously to put them in that position. If our owners invest massively in the stadium at the expense of squad investment they should know that we will get 35k crowds in a 50/60k stadium. The 20k waiting list will disappear if we're constantly in the lower half of the table. The massive waiting list only came about because Villa fans everywhere we're excited at the prospect of us finally being able to compete for honours. Hopefully Purslow was talking about after we've established ourselves atte level. It needs clarifying by Mr Purslow.

[Risso]

Good luck on getting someone like Poch to come when there's only self generated cash to spend. They've been great owners and obviously saved us from a huge mess, but it does look to me like their initial enthusiasm is on the wane. The summer transfer window after a bright start wasn't a good one, and wasn't nearly enough for us to kick on.

[boozey182]

The way I interpreted Purslow's comment about 'outs for ins' was more to do with the number of players in our squad than the cost. He did go on to say about we couldn't rely on the owners to pump in hundreds of millions indefinitely, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we can only buy players with the money we use from player sales - the club will hopefully be making money from plenty of other sources to become self sufficient to top that up.

None of that marries up with what we've been seeing under Gerrard though. We have been buying players (with the exception of Kamara) that will decrease in value purely based on their age, let alone their performances for us. We have not been giving any of our younger players game time, so there is little hope of increasing the value of any of them, and the players that would have increased in value have been underperforming recently. I think we missed a trick with Cash - if there was genuine interest in him we could have made a handsome profit there, and as good as he was for a period last season, he certainly wasn't irreplaceable. He hasn't started this season well, and I wouldn't imagine we would be able to get as big a price for him. One of my biggest problems with Gerrard is that none (or at least hardly any) of our players have played their best football under him. Everyone has got worse, and as such, decreased in value.

The more I think about it, the Gerrard appointment just feels at odds with everything we have been trying to do with the club. I just don't understand the thinking behind it.

I wouldn't worry too much about the academy - that is still a huge priority for the club. We've opened sites in Egypt and Senegal to attract talent from that part of the world as Brexit has made Europe almost impossible to work in for us. If the aim is to bring on players and then sell them for a big price to fund the first team, stretching the net into Africa seems a sensible tactic. Purslow was very proud of the fact that we have so many players out on loan at the moment - presumably each of those players could demand a transfer fee next summer if they're not going to be good enough for our first team.

[tony scott]

The buy to sell policy is crazy, why did we the sanction the purchase of players who will have very little sell on value by the end of their contracts.  If this is the new reality, the appointment of Sean Dyce would be sensible.