Cheshire Villan
Vital 1st Team Regular
Did the plans include a football ground I wonder?!
Tony Xia Thread
- Thread starter Villasince63
- Start date
Bikini Inspector
Vital Football Hero
I remember back at the time when he was trying to buy the club Xia was putting it out that he was responsible for the birds nest stadium in China which turned out to be absolute bollocks. His "plans" for Villa Park were probably part of that bit of spiel he was feeding everyone.
Cheshire Villan
Vital 1st Team Regular
"the plans look great Tony but where's Villa Park?"
"Don't you worry it's in there somewhere and it's going to be brilliant!"
Emperors new clothes?
"Don't you worry it's in there somewhere and it's going to be brilliant!"
Emperors new clothes?
gator
Vital Champions League
Well of course it was it was what probably convinced the fit and proper squad so he had to keep the pretence up.Did any of us really and truly believe his stunning 10 year plan.Personally I enjoyed hearing it but I just couldn't help reading his comments without a wry smile on my mush.
Bikini Inspector
Vital Football Hero
What a bloody fraudster. I bet Luke Rope is sweating bullets he's been in his shed all summer making our kit and he probably won't be paid now.
Wurzel
Vital Football Legend
Didn't he inherit a massive wage bill from Lerner's criminal handling of the club? Haven't we been losing money hand over fist for nearly a decade? Don't all owners finance their clubs with future earnings? Wouldn't Grealish want to go if we didn't get promoted? Don't we need to sell Grealish to satisfy FFP rules? Not defending Xia, but he looks as if it is going to cost him a sizeable amount of cash to sell the club. Did he not do what most fans wanted and dare to dream and try to get promoted as soon as possible, and he funded the likes of Terry coming to the club? It looks as if his tenure at the club will be short and so the damage he can do will be absolutely nothing to the catastrophic damage Lerner bestowed upon the club. Let's not loose sight that this club has been in dire straits for a number of years, we haven't just been in financial trouble because Xia bought us. And let's not loose sight of who sold him the club. I wouldn't let Lerner choose my 8 year olds meals let alone near a business, especially a football club.
one match ban
Vital Youth Team
How any one can blame this mess on lerner must be living in a fools paradise. The great ming new what he was doing when he bought villa.so all this mess is of his own making
gmvillan
The Shackles Are Off!
You ask a lot of question there Wurzel, and the answer to most of them is probably Yes. However, Xia has owned the club for two years, and had the opportunity to do things properly since then. He didn’t. He came in thinking that he could be a hero. He sanctioned (before Steve Round was hired) the ridiculous purchases of Golini, Tsihbola, McGatemack and hired an inexperienced (but ‘Sexy’) manager with a poor recent track record. What that did was take a bad situation and make it far far worse. So, you can blame Lerner (or Ellis) for their past failures but that doesn’t change the fact that Xia has had two years to sort things out and has instead turned us into a laughing stock.
He allowed his ego to rule. He calls himself a businessman but he’s nothing more than an excitable charlatan.
A proper businessman and/or football person would have come into the club with a plan for the future. Steve Bruce and Round would never in a million years have sanctioned massive amounts of money on a player that had made less than 20 appearances in Reading’s first team, or a GK who had played one season of first team football in Serie B.
I also know for a FACT that he’s dishonest. Remember the story about him being a striker at Harvard? Well, I was coaching at Harvard’s biggest “soccer” rival for five years. They’ve had one or two Chinese player on their team and most assuredly none were a striker called Tony Xia. Harvard’s sports website is very good. You can research their archived rosters....
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Wurzel
Vital Football Legend
Not for a moment obsolving Xia of blame , he gambled on living the dream and it went wrong, that spending spree like the appointment of RDM was ill advised and smacked of amateurism, but the club had been in a dreadful financial state for years before he took over, Xia seems to be the final straw as Lerner's mishanding of the club finally comes home to roost. Many were in favour of Xia's spending spree and support we the signing of many of the players including Terry on £70,000 a week.
AllanJW
Vital Newbie
And if he didn't then he's a bigger fool than anyone thought. Once you fulfil the takeover everything afterwards is on you.
Wurzel
Vital Football Legend
So you are saying that Xia is responsible for contracts signed before he came to the club? He is responsible for 5years of decline before he bought the club? There don't seem many positives to Xia's reign for sure but at least we had/ have a collection of players that win more games than they loose.
gmvillan
The Shackles Are Off!
In a nutshell, yes he is responsible for those. He knew about them when he purchased the club so he therefore assumes responsibility for them. If I buy a car with crap tyres I can't take it back six months later and tell the old owner to pay for new ones. Similarly, if I get into an accident due to those tyres I can't blame the accident on the previous owner. The cost of those contracts was a known quantity. Take the 5 million spent on Tshibola and pay off Richards. Take the 3.5 million for Golini and pay off Flabby.
gmvillan
The Shackles Are Off!
You are correct that many were in favor of the new signings. I remember the comments about Golini at the time "ooh he was at Man Utd" and "anyone is an upgrade on Guzan." Same as RDM: "well he did win the champions league at Chelsea." Tsihbola: "his mentor is Patrick Vierra, and he's got a great physique, so he's gonna be great." It's the nature of fans to get excited about new signings at their club, and we will always look for the positives, until there are no more to look for. Trust me, I'm no different.
McParlandTheGreat
Vital Champions League
Hang on. Let's not go overboard on the facts. If some of the signings when Xia came in didn't work out (it happens), a lot did. Some of those players, eg Chester, Kodjia, represent the best of what we have. McCormack has done well at plenty of clubs. Tishbola was bought for the future. Maybe only Gollini was a disaster. The manager with a "poor track record" was a European Cup winner; he's record has been more mixed than poor.
As for sorting out the club, it's an awful lot better run than it was under Lerner and Fox.
The problem is simple. The money stream into the club has dried up. Could he have forseen it? Should he have cut spending further a year ago rather than now? Whatever, he does take responsibility for the financial mess we're in. I haven't the faintest about the truth behind this crisis. None of us do. It's not good and the signs are ominous. Blame him for that, have a healthy suspicion about what underlies it, but don't pretend it has been a disaster from day 1.
Bikini Inspector
Vital Football Hero
Let's put it this way the club was not on the brink of Administration when Xia bought it and much of the culling had already been done under Lambert. Dr Tony is to blame for this and nobody else. He sold himself as some sort of wizard and it turns out he was just a fair ground grifter.
"Merd"
Vital Football Hero
Staff wages £93m when Xia took over, the only other reported accounts were £61m. If the stories are to be believed our next accounts wages will be in the region of £45m (which will include Terry et al). The first two figures are facts and show that the management team was working towards FFP and a sustainable model.
The problem we have this season is to reduce wages to under £30m, so we will have to sell in order to buy - the way other football clubs outside of the PL have to.
This is not corruption nor incompetence. Any new owner will have to work to these figures unless we can earn significantly more. Everyone should have already known that this year was going to be extremely challenging financially.
The worry for me is the instability at board level and the cash flow crisis. This and the fact that Xia's businesses have taken a huge hit on the stock exchange means that cash is tight.
As for his plans for any redevelopment, he was using Villa as an investment vehicle to get access to our government regeneration funding - it would never have been funded by himself. Our current finances are a legacy of the Lerner final years and yes, everyone is probably right that Xia has been economical with the truth about a multitude of things. I just wish people would represent the facts as guessing is leading to mass hysteria.
We have a estimated turnover of £50m this season. Accept that and you can easily see why we are under financial stress. This is half the turnover of 2016. Did we gamble? Yes, up to the max allowable, and now we have things her readjust to meet things hehe new challenge. Is Xia the right man for that? I, like everyone else, just don't know but I will not call him Carsen Yeung until further facts are available.
The problem we have this season is to reduce wages to under £30m, so we will have to sell in order to buy - the way other football clubs outside of the PL have to.
This is not corruption nor incompetence. Any new owner will have to work to these figures unless we can earn significantly more. Everyone should have already known that this year was going to be extremely challenging financially.
The worry for me is the instability at board level and the cash flow crisis. This and the fact that Xia's businesses have taken a huge hit on the stock exchange means that cash is tight.
As for his plans for any redevelopment, he was using Villa as an investment vehicle to get access to our government regeneration funding - it would never have been funded by himself. Our current finances are a legacy of the Lerner final years and yes, everyone is probably right that Xia has been economical with the truth about a multitude of things. I just wish people would represent the facts as guessing is leading to mass hysteria.
We have a estimated turnover of £50m this season. Accept that and you can easily see why we are under financial stress. This is half the turnover of 2016. Did we gamble? Yes, up to the max allowable, and now we have things her readjust to meet things hehe new challenge. Is Xia the right man for that? I, like everyone else, just don't know but I will not call him Carsen Yeung until further facts are available.
