Villa since 1992/3

1

1958Villan

Vital Football Hero
Since the inauguration season of 1992/3, Aston Villa have finished each season as follows.

1992/3 - 2nd.
1993/4 - 10th.
1994/5 - 18th (22 teams).
1995/6 - 4th.
1996/7 - 5th.
1997/8 - 7th.
1998/9 - 6th.
1999/00 - 6th.
2000/01 - 8th.
2001/02 - 8th.
2002/03 - 16th.
2003/04 - 6th.
2004/5 - 10th.
2005/06 - 16th,
2006/07 - 11th.
2007/08 - 6th.
2008/09 - 6th.
2009/10 - 6th.
2010/11 - 9th.
2011/12 - 16th.
2012/13 - 15th.
2013/14 - 15th.
2014/15 - 17th.
2015/16 - 20th. (relegated).
2016/17 - 13th in championship.

We are in trouble with FFP because, we are continuing to pay over the odds for second rate players, putting them on top wages.
For example, Richards on £60k a week.
When we signed him, he was an unsuccessful loanee, unsuccessful in that in a years loan in Italy, he played less than a handful of games.
At the same time, Tottenham were paying a very successful player, like Ericson, £30k a week.
This has been our stumbling block, instead of being realistic about where we have been and which direction we have been heading, we have been paying top 6 or 7 premiership club wages, to players who were lower half championship quality, at best.
A forlorn hope, that if you pay a 3-legged donkey enough, it will turn into a Grand National winner.
Long gone the time to wake up and realise that that will never happen, unless its a blue moon, with pigs flying overhead, singing the national anthem.
If this isn't taken on board and pretty damn quickly, Aston Villa will go into administration and cease to exist.
 
Totally spot on. Suspect the argument has been that if we didn't pay those wages they wouldn't come to us. Wrong thinking. Go for players who want to come to us on a reasonable wage. It's what happens at most other clubs. The most successful chairmen are those who keep a tight grip on the wages. At least you couldn't fault Doug for overpaying, yet we managed to get stars like Mellberg and Laursen.

Xia knows the problem. Hope if Whelan does come we don't pay him Stoke wages.
 
Sure I read somewhere Huddersfield got promotion with a wage to turnover ratio of around 30%.

We got relegated after the genius that was Tom Fox with a still plus 80% ratio.

I'm sure those with a better grip of numbers than me can tell me why I'm wrong, but I'd honestly pay off contracts just to get rid of some as I fail to see how we'd be any worse off in reality.
 
Absolutely - pay them off just to get rid of them. How can it be of any benefit to the club if players see some guys earning £50-£60k pw who almost never play. It also inflates the wage demands of incomings. What does it do for the young players trying to break through when they see the manager trying to reinvent has beens. The culture is all wrong, it makes Villa look like a gravy train to players who have shone at smaller clubs but who invariably fail to do so here [which is another story].
 
Agree Mike, paying off some contracts, obviously impossible to pay off all in one fell swoop.
As McParlandtheGreat says and for all his many faults, Deadly didn't overpay on the wage front. (By the way Doug didn't hire MON, until 3 days after he had ceased to be chairman and owner).
It has been Mons trademark, when managing a club, to overpay, in both purchase prices and contracts. This is why every club he has left, has fallen on financial hard times, some, indeed most, taking over a decade to recover.
This is what we have to look forward too. Unfortunately it has happened to us, just at the time when even bigger money has come into the premiership. This will make it doubly hard to catch up for any promoted teams and we are likely to see a few seasons of yo-yo clubs, switching between championship and premiership and back again.
 
villasince67 - 17/7/2017 01:00

Absolutely - pay them off just to get rid of them. How can it be of any benefit to the club if players see some guys earning £50-£60k pw who almost never play. It also inflates the wage demands of incomings. What does it do for the young players trying to break through when they see the manager trying to reinvent has beens. The culture is all wrong, it makes Villa look like a gravy train to players who have shone at smaller clubs but who invariably fail to do so here [which is another story].
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Where you are wrong 67, is that its another story. It is an integral part of the same story.
Other than that, you are spot on.
 
Yup we've been a cash cow for going on a decade now, Gabby's form and usability vs his wage has to be a goto for new players and their agents and even at best if it only adds an extra grand a week to their demands, that adds up over time.

After all the cost cutting for 5+ years, if right, we were still relegated at 80% wage to turnover that is fucking horrific.

Again Big Eck for all his seven defender faults, he wiped 13mil off the wage bill in his year in charge. Wibbling Lambert grew it again despite claiming the opposite and playing the victim.

Clearly it didn't change under Cheeky Tim and Dumb Tom, Remi well he can't be blamed, and now our first team is overloaded and we can only get rid of people on loans.

Xia and Wyness have made a great start and yes promotion - or failure to get promoted this season is a failure - but the club is so far from being right it's going to take 3-4 years to fix in my humble.

Come January IF promotion doesn't look likely, I'd rather the club strip right back, lead with the youth and ignore quick fixes and look to lay the foundations for success in 2-3 years knowing we have a youthful core that can last us the next decade.

And that means bye bye Gabby, Hutton et al, and for me anybody over the age of 26 minus the likes of Jedi.

But even with that said, we jettisoned the likes of Sellars this summer so we can't even turn to our Under 23 side.

Oh for the days of DJ and Robinson!
 
Maybe the club should enter a FFP contract with each player before they sign their contracts and actually pay them for the actual time they are available to play, gate on the house wont open then you drop from £35,000 a week to £5000 a week, pay as you play?

I know when Gold and Sullivan were at Bloose they always had a relegation clause in the "Higher Earners" contracts. If we get relegated your wages will drop to.... or you can leave.

 
Prior to last season, the average wage for a championship player was around £15k.
Hourihane for example was on £7.5k at Barnsley, at Villa he's on £28k.

I reckon the club should have a wage structure based on league position, for example, say the league average was £20k, we could agree to pay £20k if the club are in the top 6. Then for positions 7 - 12, the pay drops to £15k. For positions 13 - 18 it goes to £10k. And for positions 18 - 24 it is £5k. That way we would be paying for results and the players would have to become a team and not a collection of individuals.
 
A good friend of mine who was a professional footballer at the highest level once told me he earned a modest basic. His biggest earnings came from win bonuses and other similar add-ons.

He said if the team failed to win the dressing room would be not a nice place to be in but they all made sure the game after that they would do everything to win.

He also said that he hated facing his missus when she had heard that he wouldn't be getting a win bonus.
 
I think this is the way any team outside of the top 6 or 7 premiership clubs will have to go, to stay financially viable, especially now the big TV money has become massive.
 
One of the biggest faults was buying players while failing to move on the old. Randy's one positive move was to not let MON buy yet more players before he'd sold those he didn't want, which is why MON left. But one reason why MON couldn't shift the deadwood was that their wages were too high (probably wasn't on his radar either). Houllier planned a clearout but wasn't given the chance to see it through; Houllier as DOF and McAllister as manager might have stopped the rot. McLeish suffered because he then had minimal transfer funds, but it was the right thing to do.

Then came Lambert. New squad every year and expensive players doing nothing on the sidelines. Recipe for disaster. Finally, Reilly & Co adding to the mess.

Just shifting Richards would be great. Less worried about Hutton and Gabby because they've only one year left, and the club can offer them a more sensible wage then or let them go.

We've 30 listed in the main squad (doesn't include recent signings or youngsters on the fringe), which is too large even for the PL. Somewhere around 20 would be more reasonable. We've youngsters we can add to that when needed. Gollini, Richards, Elphick, Steer, Veretout, Amavi, Sanchez and Cissokho are 8 players we could lose with no negative impact at all, and that's before you look at other players whose position is questionable.
 
Just so frustrating as even the club saw this coming, RL did, but decision after decision failed to address it.

It's how it should be Fulford, a dressing room should be hell after a loss.

I doubt ours has been for years. Too busy bumtweeting cars after a loss.
 
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