Chris Heck - President of Business Operations

[chrisw1]

Very impressive.

[Smithy]

Watched it, and yeah, the round logo is toast.  As others have said, I'd expect something like a lion and the words Aston Villa underneath, like the spurs chicken, if he genuinely believes in keeping things simple.  The iterations of the 76ers logo was interesting, so it might be we refine it over a few years.  "Owning a colour" was interesting. I suspect it will be mean the end of different shades of claret and blue - they will be well-defined, and we'll stick to it across everything. Which will be nice and hopefully see and end to any future pink-ish monstrosities.

He speaks very well, I like the 76ers story, I can see why the owners have brought him in.  He doesn't have three years 'under the radar' like he did in Philli, given we're in Europe already and will be targeting the top 6 next year, but I am interested to see if he bring the same philosophy with him in terms of bringing the local community close to the club.

If he can have the same sort of impact off the pitch, as our owner's last appointment did ON it, then there could be some exciting times ahead!

[chrisw1]

I thought we had established specific colour pallets for our claret and blue a while back.  Did this fall by the wayside?

[OCD]

Watched it yesterday at 1.75x speed. I could see parallels and why we've hired him but he starts from a more advanced position with us.

The story about being sponsored by Pepsi and there being a Coke can machine at the stadium made me laugh.

[pablo_picasso]

Watched it, and yeah, the round logo is toast.  As others have said, I'd expect something like a lion and the words Aston Villa underneath, like the spurs chicken, if he genuinely believes in keeping things simple.  The iterations of the 76ers logo was interesting, so it might be we refine it over a few years.  "Owning a colour" was interesting. I suspect it will be mean the end of different shades of claret and blue - they will be well-defined, and we'll stick to it across everything. Which will be nice and hopefully see and end to any future pink-ish monstrosities.

The iterations of the logo ended up with them going back to the 1964-1977 logo, if that graphic on the previous page from London Villan is correct.

[Risso]

Slightly worries me that he does a lot of harking back to the past, when really I want us to concentrate on future success. Whilst not belittling its importance in our history, I don't want somebody that's going to drone on about 82 forever.

[Drummond]

No, there's enough of us on here doing that!

[pablo_picasso]

Slightly worries me that he does a lot of harking back to the past, when really I want us to concentrate on future success. Whilst not belittling its importance in our history, I don't want somebody that's going to drone on about 82 forever.

Tbf to him, it wasn't all about the 76'ers franchise past that he looked back on as inspiration.

There was a lot of history regarding the city of Philadelphia he utilised too.

[Goldenballs]

Both of their badges looked fucking shite.

[Dogtanian]

Slightly worries me that he does a lot of harking back to the past, when really I want us to concentrate on future success. Whilst not belittling its importance in our history, I don't want somebody that's going to drone on about 82 forever.

Tbf to him, it wasn't all about the 76'ers franchise past that he looked back on as inspiration.

There was a lot of history regarding the city of Philadelphia he utilised too.

He also said that because the team were so poor, they didn't really have star players or on court success they could use to get people excited about the team, so they had to turn to past stars and history to bring people in while they built up the brand.

We're in a much better situation, we have players we can get excited about that other teams would want, and we're legitimately in the top 10 of clubs in the country and have a genuine chance of winning something in the next couple of seasons.

I'm sure he will be using that rather than relying too heavily on the past. I mean, if you were trying to talk someone into being a Villa fan, would you talk about what we did in the 80s or would you focus on how fantastic the next season or two could be?

[Villan82]

Watched it, and yeah, the round logo is toast.  As others have said, I'd expect something like a lion and the words Aston Villa underneath, like the spurs chicken, if he genuinely believes in keeping things simple.  The iterations of the 76ers logo was interesting, so it might be we refine it over a few years.  "Owning a colour" was interesting. I suspect it will be mean the end of different shades of claret and blue - they will be well-defined, and we'll stick to it across everything. Which will be nice and hopefully see and end to any future pink-ish monstrosities.

So we will move from stupid, inaccurate comments about copying chelsea to stupid but accurate comments about copying bloody Spurs? Why is everybody missing the point about the new crest being presented, very effectively during consultation, as one that gave us the option of using as stand-alone lion with 'Aton Villa' overhead? Can we not just go with that everywhere digital and use the full circle version on the stadium?

Our badge as been a divisive issue for as long as I can remember and I think they have made a mistake re-opening it after it was settled last year. Open to being proved wrong but I think it is a mess and would prefer if, even just for one year, we got rid of the Lerner badge from all digital representations of the club (stadium and other aspects that cost money can always wait)

[algy]

Slightly worries me that he does a lot of harking back to the past, when really I want us to concentrate on future success. Whilst not belittling its importance in our history, I don't want somebody that's going to drone on about 82 forever.

I don't think he needs to as much with us as he did in Philadelphia. As others have said, they were in a different situation.  They had low crowds, with a low value assigned to going to games ($1 tickets), and they couldn't point to any of the players on the court as they were rubbish.  So they leaned in to nostalgia to get the fans back in to the ground.

With us, I'm sure we'll be leaning on some of our history to some extent (Champions of Europe is already fairly well covered, but there's a decent history of stuff before that - William McGregor / founding the league being a really obvious one.  Can also see us pushing heavily on a few things like really emphasising the club's prominent position in Birmingham and the wider Midlands area.  Stuff like, I dunno, getting Benjamin Zephaniah to come up with some inspirational words, then getting various local high-profile people - Denise Lewis or Geezer Butler or whoever - to read it out when the teams come out.  Something like that, where it's not explicitly about our history ... but it's clearly emphasising that Aston Villa, over say Sandwell or Small Heath, are the football club that people in/from Birmingham support, and the local area too.

With the badge, I could see us either going for something fairly simple.  I'd almost be inclined to say the 1957 badge might actually be the one to go for here.  No wording, just a lion on a plain shield, with or without a scroll underneath with some text underneath (which could be "Aston Villa FC", but could equally be "Villa In The Community" or "Villa Maths Club" or whatever.  Ultimately join up claret shield AND/OR a lion (facing the right way) = Aston Villa = Birmingham.

[eamonn]

Watched it yesterday at 1.75x speed. I could see parallels and why we've hired him but he starts from a more advanced position with us.

The story about being sponsored by Pepsi and there being a Coke can machine at the stadium made me laugh.

Why the need to mention the speed? Are you saying Americans talk, like, slowleee?

[paul_e]

Slightly worries me that he does a lot of harking back to the past, when really I want us to concentrate on future success. Whilst not belittling its importance in our history, I don't want somebody that's going to drone on about 82 forever.

Tbf to him, it wasn't all about the 76'ers franchise past that he looked back on as inspiration.

There was a lot of history regarding the city of Philadelphia he utilised too.

He also said that because the team were so poor, they didn't really have star players or on court success they could use to get people excited about the team, so they had to turn to past stars and history to bring people in while they built up the brand.

We're in a much better situation, we have players we can get excited about that other teams would want, and we're legitimately in the top 10 of clubs in the country and have a genuine chance of winning something in the next couple of seasons.

I'm sure he will be using that rather than relying too heavily on the past. I mean, if you were trying to talk someone into being a Villa fan, would you talk about what we did in the 80s or would you focus on how fantastic the next season or two could be?

Yep, the job he describes is exactly what we should've done after we got relegated. From now he's got a different job which is to get us over the big hurdle of being competitive (commercially) with the teams that are backed by oil money or years of champions league doping.

[OCD]

More so if anyone wants to watch it but doesn't want to put 45 minutes into it, they can. I don't know how long YouTube have had this as I've only noticed it in the last year.