Bad behaviour damages all of our reputation

We have some magnificent away supporters, at many grounds we easily out sing the home supporters and for many games we take huge numbers. However at times we let ourselves down badly, an example was last season at the infamous Fenhurst pub outside the Blackburn away end. If you had not heard the pub was ’smashed up’ by drunken Villa fans and some fixtures and fittings inside the ground were vandalised as well.

However nothing sickens me more than what I read on this thread on H&V.

There is nothing worse than hearing anti-semitic abuse being directed at Tottenham supporters. It demeans the whole club and especially the supporters to hear that this happens and I have witnessed that myself on trips to Spurs but that was a few years ago and you would hope that people had grown up now.

So I encourage anyone who saw this happening to report the culprits to the club if you know them. If not then at least make the descriptions of the people available to the club.

These very small numbers of people harm our clubs reputation and that of the vast majority of us are fantastic supporters of Villa. We should do our very best to police ourselves to stamp out this nauseous behaviour and report these instances as we see them.

Wembley ticket details for non season ticket holders

After season ticket holders have took the allocation of Wembley tickets Villa have announced the following detail for sales of tickets on priority sale.

This seems very fair to me to include the earlier Carling cup games and this should satisfy most people. the estimate is that there will be around 1500 tickets available

Official Site Link

Monday February 15: On sale to supporters who have a 12+ home booking history (including either Carling Cup fixture at home to Cardiff City or Blackburn Rovers). Matches played in the 2009-10 season only

Tuesday February 16: On sale to supporters who have a 10+ home booking history (including either Carling Cup fixture at home to Cardiff City or Blackburn Rovers). Matches played in the 2009-10 season only

Wednesday February 17: On sale to supporters who have a 7+ home booking history (including either Carling Cup fixture at home to Cardiff City or Blackburn Rovers). Matches played in the 2009-10 season only

There will always be those unhappy at the allocations, there will always be the odd person whose fair claims are ignored but what else could the club do about it, cater for the odd person out of thousands, just not possible.

The Defence of Gabby and comparsions to Defoe, the Spurs charlatan

After yesterday’s game a debate has took place on Villa forums regarding the effectiveness of Gabby and how he compares to Defoe.

Before I look at the two directly let me put my defence of Gabby first.

I personally think Gabby is a misunderstand and under rated player by the Villa fans. Where I sit in the Lower Holte he is the player that gets the most stick. Is that because he is a local boy and Brummies diss their own, I do not know but I really believe we have a top PL forward on our books, one who has been brought up from the ranks and a Brummie to boot.

Since he has baulked up he has become stronger on the ball, able to brush defenders aside like we saw yesterday and is much better on the ball than many people give him credit for. Whilst I acknowledge sometimes when he has time he seems to dither he has scored many goals that can only be called instinctive and any forward would be proud of.

We then have comparisons to Defoe. Defoe is a player I would liken to a flat track bully, his stats against the higher teams are very poor but against the weaker teams is excellent, almost Gabby in reverse who let me remind you has scored against all the local derby teams and against all the ’sky 4′ teams home and away.

Some people say Defoe is the better finisher but lets look at the stats for both and this is blatantly not right and in fact the only reason Defoe gets more is that he plays for a much more creative team who thrash the lower teams, unlike us.

From the PL stats

OVERALL

Defoe

Total goals – 94

0.15 shot/goals ratio

Gabby

43 Goals

0.19 shots/goal ratio

THIS SEASON

Defoe

15 goals

0.2 shots/goal ratio

Gabby

10 goals

0.21 shots/goals ratio

Would I swap Gabby for Defoe, never.

Petrov to face Milner in 2012 Euro Qualifiers

Draw for the 2012 European Championships i Poland/Ukraine has just taken place

An intriguing draw for all Villa watchers as Villa’s Bulgarian Captain Petrov, has been drawn against England which could comprise a fair few Villa players in the squad and I am convinced by then Milner will be a starter for England

Group G

England, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Wales, Montenegro

How far should we risk the future of Aston Villa

A constant theme over the past few months is we all know we need that ’star’ player but we all know we would have to pay astronomical fees and wages to attract the players. The question is whether we can afford this and whether the risk is worth it. It is reckoned by most serious judges of football that wages as part of turnover should not be over 75%

the last Published accounts for the 2007/08 season show

Turnover – £75,639,000
Wages – £50,447,000

A ratio of 66% Turnover/age ratio, comfortably below the 75%

We will not know the figures for the 2008/09 season for another 3 months or so, however we can take some educated guesses.

We know the wages will have significantly gone up, in the time since the last reported accounts, Ash Young’s contract was renewed significantly higher. In general the likes of Warnock, Cuellar, Dunne, Heskey, Milner have all been brought on high wages at least £1.5m a year if not more, it is likely given the ones leaving have been cheaper that the wage bill could be £65 million a year if not more.

Therefore to be within that 75% ratio turnover will have to be at least £90m an increase of £15m over two years but TV revenues which make up a large % of turnover have remained fairly static.

It is a fair guess that we have breached now that 75% limit on wages/turnovers and this may explain the apparent reluctance to go any further.

Randy Lerner a while back was quoted in the Sunday Mercury as saying

dangle my foot over the ravine’

to have success

and MON just three weeks ago said

“We are not looking at players at this minute because we have to sell. Do I have to sell to buy? We wouldn’t be the only club in that position.”

It is simple really we have the cash I believe to spend money on fees, we increased the share capital in 12th March 2009 by £100,000,000 to £200,000,000 this gives Randy the chance to convert loan notes into shares as Man City and Chelsea owners have done.

The key question is over the wages as per revenue and when fans talk of taking risks by buying very high waged players they have to remember our wage bill is now already close if not exceeding the 75% limit as recommended above.

to take those extra steps are you willing Villa to risk the future by taking wages ever closer to 100% of revenue, that is what Portsmouth did and look at them.

Fantastic defence keeps Spurs at bay, but what is the point of Carew

No-one will pretend today’s performance was a classic, in fact quite the opposite it was at times quite desperate. However with the clear MOTM Richard Dunne at the heart of defence and Friedel rock solid we came away from White Hart Lane with yet another clean sheet and a valuable away point at a close rival.

The turning point of the game came when Heskey was forced off, until then we were playing well and Heskey was doing well holing up the ball, then Carew came on.

OK, lets give him some leeway, he has been ‘injured’ but that was abysmal from him, time and time again he failed to hold up the ball like Heskey did and this forced us deeper and deeper back. I have no qualms that if Heskey is out for Man United and other games Nathan Delfouneso, because he would easily be an improvement on Carew any time.

However Spurs came up against a man made brick wall called Collins and Dunne and with Friedel ably supporting them with a few scares they never looked like scoring.

So with just 18 goals conceded in 24 games we are 3 points behind fourth and after Man U on Wednesday a much easier run of fixtures to come. Yes against the very top opposition we lack the top creativity to break them down but our record against the rest of the top 7 with just 3 games to come is very good, if not excellent.

Unlike some on the forums it is not a time to panic but to be hopeful and to admire the resilience and determination of our team nad that goes a long long way to success.

A trip down memory (White Hart) Lane

I have been on many trips down to Whte Hart Lane over the years and rarely do you see boring games. This season however will be watching it on ESPN somewhere and yet against we have another game we need to win to have serious ambitions for top 4, a draw obviously is not the worst result in the world.

Similarities to 21st February 1990 are appropriate now. Back then it was one of my first away trips we were challenging for the title and went to WHL to face a Terry Venables led Spurs with Gazza and Lineker. We were expected to lose but instead turned in a majestic performance to win 2-0 with goals from Ormodroyd and Platt. Now obviously tomorrow is not about the league but top 4 is vital to both team future, the press as usual love Tottenham and barely mention us, can it happen again ?

Tottenham’s form has been rather patchy recently but ours is an unbeaten January, progression to Wembley
and in the FA Cup. Whilst the West Ham result was disappointing the form was good and last week against Fulham we were great with a defence that at the moment looks impregnable. It is disappointing to lose Warnock at the moment but Carew’s return is welcome (his time of the year to score) and Gabby maybe is over his slump earlier than normal ?

This game and Manchester United represent the last two games back to back that anyone would call tough, we get anywhere between 3 & 6 points would leave us in a very good position for 4th place and in turn damage Tottenham’s push for fourth.

We never lack determination and faith as a team but sometimes we lack that quality in the final third against Fulham we showed more signs of this and more of that we will have a very good run in to the season.

Milner in Summer talks over new contract

There was a story a couple of weeks we were going to offer James Milner a new contract to ward off interest.

In todays pre match press conference (Sky Sports)MON has confirmed that there will be talks in the summer

O’Neill told the Express and Star: “I would say we wouldn’t be looking at people until summertime, but that doesn’t mean that James Milner hasn’t been fantastic for this football club.

“I’ve already spoken to him and we are leaving everything, we’re not going to sit down now.

“The season is far too busy and summertime is the perfect time to talk and I think all parties agree on that too.”

This is fantastic news and I doubt James Milner will be difficult to negotiate with and he deserves every penny. The true professional footballer, teetotal, fantastic attitude and of course player.

I love him and I did predict he would be a major star as far back as June but in reality when he first came to us on loan in DOL’s disastrous first season

Love Milner

Doug Ellis and his mythmakers

Matt Kendrick in the Evening Mail last night basically reprinted the same article I quoted in this blog post. In this post I corrected a point made in the article which I felt disparaged those involved in the the ‘Anti-Ellis’ protests since 2000, which I am glad was not reproduced.

Lets be clear where I come from

ellisout.com

and anyone remember dougout.ukweb.nu ?

So as usual when we get an Ellis article the forums come alive as shown by these two threads

H&V
Villatalk

Within these forums are contained some gems of comments and this is what I mean by ‘myth makers’. These quotes show the myth and obviously there are rebuttals to them but it is amazing that over time how the myths can spread so that large numbers do believe them

Yes, Doug is an egomaniac, as most people with money tend to be to some degree or other, but he was not as bad as some people make out as he did not saddle us with huge debt, kept prices amongst the lowest in the league and in the end helped make us an attractive investment opportunity.

Lets be fair here i would rather Doug was running us on a tight budget and still have a club instead of throwing stupid wages and transfer fees and be like Leeds and if it wasnt for Abramovich Chelsea would be finished as well.
I wasnt always happy with this policy but at least eh didnt plunge us into debts.

Also he is actually a very nice man when you talk to him and he also should be praised for selling to Randy instead of George Gillett who offered more money

These two quotes just show how some people totally misunderstood the dire straits the club was in at the end of the 2005-6 season.

Yes we won two league cups under Ellis and two near championships, but since he came back in 1983 we were relegated once and involved in at least 6 relegation battles.

When he sold to Randy the club was £10m in debt and the banks refusing to extend it further, the work on the training ground had stopped, at least one supplier had not been paid. Also we had just had the infamous players letter, Barry was about to be sold to Pompey and only 7000 season tickets sold before MON arrived.
The club was nowhere in a stable and decent position, in fact quite the opposite.

Whilst I have no proof of this it has been said that Rothschilds were brought in despite Ellis and was forced onto by the only other major shareholder Jack Petchey who wanted his money back. As reported by Pat Murphy during negotiations with Randy, he had walked out on Ellis due to demand like Ellis wanted to stay on as executive chairman. Randy was only persuaded by a combination of Keith Harris and Rothschild’s to go back and Ellis was forced by Steve Stride to do the deal, not the myth that somehow Ellis ‘picked Randy’ out of choice.

So all I have to conclude with is to list what Randy has done to Villa since he has been there (a lot from a document VFC sent him), some of which cost money some of which did not to understand the total difference Randy has made and thus makes the Ellis regime seem like what it really was. A self serving one for a very egotistical man.

Holte Pub rebuild – built a gateway to VP not matched anywhere in the country

The General communicating with the fans, the SCG’s

Free coaches, scarves and flags

Classy signage around the ground and on the Trinity Road

Totally restarting the training ground making it one of the best in the country

Card system at the turnstiles

Rebuild of the Trinity Road exec suites to the best in the country (you had to see them before to understand)

Removal of the Doug Ellis sign from the front of the Witton Lane

opening the Holte Suite at half time

Rebuilding of the Holte Suite

Money for players way beyond incoming fees and one off’s like share floatation

A sense of history and pride to the whole club

Reconnecting to the local community

AND

The 1982 European Cup return to VP, just remember that Ellis never allowed any photo’s of 1982 around the ground

Away shirts for The Carling Cup final

Just on Sky Sports News that we will be wearing the away shirt at Wembley