Steve Hollis 
meets the fans

THE FULL TRANSCRIPT...

New chairman and CEO Tom Fox given a grilling at packed fans meeting - Gregg Evans looks at how they got on. This is the full transcript of the meeting.

Steve Hollis

When I was appointed I was overwhelmed by the response. I have been on a number of company boards. Typically you get around three inches in the newspaper. 

The reaction here is quite staggering. It shows just how passionately people feel about this football club. I do not underestimate the challenge or responsibility that I have as chairman, or the board has, we’ll be announcing more around the board itself in the next few weeks, to address some of the issues. 

Just for background… the reality is my background is not football. I have been very plain about that. This football club has huge assets, I do think we have a responsibility to be accountable as a board for what has happened and why we are in this position. 

But the reality is that is not going to change anything, we are where we are. The only thing that’s going to change the fortunes of this football club is how we actually learn from what’s happened – over the last five years – hopefully you will see the fortunes return to this club that we all want to see.

THE Q&A BEGINS

FAN:Where this shambles has appeared from? I’ve been following this club for 60-odd years and never seen the club in such a state as it is now. What do you intend to do about the whole of the club, ticketing, marketing whatever.

TOM FOX: The easy explanation for how the club ends up where it is today is that the game and the league has changed dramatically in the last decade. You have clubs like Arsenal building new stadiums, clubs like Manchester United adding 285 people to their commercial operation. You have clubs that are historically much smaller than our great club adding more resources and capability, and approaching the business of doing football in a very different way.

The fact is we didn’t. We stood still for a lot of those years when the business was growing, when the club should have been more aggressive in developing its capabilities. We kept doing thing the exact same way when everyone else is growing. You are going to fall behind.

Over last 10 years, the revenue we controlled as a football club in the most successful financial decade in the history of sport, has grown 14 per cent, that’s not even inflation. That gives you an idea of how we were approaching our business and how we were standing still.

New website has been under development for the last six to eight months. There will be a new website rolling out. In the last 18 months I have been here we have done a lot of things differently. We have re-structured the entire set up at Villa Park, we have brought in some talent from outside football. We were well behind.

In terms of the football, we had a very aggressive plan over the summer, we had a lot to do. We had a squad that had been fighting relegation for four seasons in a row, even with Fabian Delph and Christian Benteke. Taking them out of it and trying to replace them would put us in the same squad, fighting relegation.

We looked at what we had to do and it was a massively big job. We had a manager at the time who was willing to work through and do the tough business under the hood of the squad and the academy. It was a very difficult job in one transfer window to try and undo what had been done in prior four, five, six, seven.

As I look at it today, where we fell down is not necessarily in recruitment, we fell down, my team and I, failed to execute the integration of those players into our country, our club, our culture, the Premier League.

We essentially had seven players coming into starting XI that are different. That is a massive for the club and coaching staff to assimilate. The fact of the matter is we did not execute against that as well as we should have. We assumed the club could do that. We didn’t.

We then had a situation doing the one thing we wanted to avoid – a manager change early in the season. We didn’t anticipate that. It is certainly not something we had planned. I think that put us in a very difficult situation. We had a new manager coming into a squad where he didn’t pick all the players.

We had a manager come into the club in November with players who weren’t acclimatised to the league, who certainly weren’t together as a team or a squad. It was a very difficult job to do.

I raise my hand, we had an aggressive plan in the summer that we needed to execute very well. We didn’t successfully integrate those players. That is why we are struggling.

We are still trying to make changes to the set up at Bodymoor Heath that need to be made, to move from a setup where a manager-centric model, where one person dictates who comes in, who goes out and whether a player deserves a long-term contract or is allowed to leave on a free. Only at a manager’s sole discretion.

We’re trying to build is an environment where the football club as an operation stands on its own and if a manager leaves it does not fall down. That’s a structure that a lot of the smaller clubs who are higher up in the table than we are – and playing better football – that’s the model they employ. That’s the model we chose in the summer under our previous manager, and we are much more confident about the future.

FAN: Would you consider publishing a plan for the future? Which tells us about the issues around ticket office, academy for example? I’ve seen lots of managers and players but we’re always here.

STEVE HOLLIS:  Every business I have ever been involved in is only as good as the service you provide for your customer, the relationship that you have with your customer and suppliers. 

Lose that and your business comes down. Clearly there are issues around the service to the fans and where it needs to be. When I sit down with Tom I will take these points forward. I got here a little early for the Leicester game and the reaction to this place is that people like coming to Villa Park. 

This is a team at the bottom of the league but even in adversity people were saying I want to come to Villa Park. When we start turning the corner at this place, boy it could be something special. Please, you must be forceful around the things that are not working well. Please, keep it coming.

FAN: When are we going to see the academy thriving again?

TOM FOX: The academy is critical for a club of our size. There are many clubs ahead of us. Their financial ability is greater than ours. There is no easy answer. I can’t sit you down and run you through everything. We have a new director called Sean Kimberley, he is doing a thorough review of the academy. It has evolved. 

We are making sure that we are doing all the good things other clubs are doing higher up the table. One of the most important people is Hendrik. His role has been incredibly misunderstood. 

He’s our sporting director. For the past four years at Arsenal he has done exactly what we’ve asked him to do at our football club. To look at our academy and understand whether it is geared to attract young players and develop them properly and turn them into players who can play for our football club and become re-saleable assets is part of his remit. 

At Arsenal he put in the new academy director when Liam Brady retired, he put in the new strength coach and created a different physical programme for them. He spent a lot of time in that department at Arsenal and it’s one of the many areas he has come in to help us. 

We have Sean and Hendrik taking a very deep look. If it hasn’t changed dramatically over the past ten years, it probably isn’t keeping pace with other clubs who have developed their academy with new ways of thinking. We’re right for some new thinking so that is what Hendrik and Sean will bring to the table.

Disconnect

FAN: Feels like there is a disconnect between the CEO and the fans?

TOM FOX:“I believe there isn’t. When I’m asked a question about the football club, as chief executive, I’m thinking about the entire football club. Money we spend on the academy, the players, the manager that is designed to give better success on the pitch, that money has to come from somewhere. 

As a successful chief executive, I have to be able to deliver the revenue we need to be successful. This football club lives and exists for one reason - to play football and make the fans feel proud of it. 

We are failing in that one objective, We are not playing the right football and getting the results that make fans proud. There is absolutely no disconnect. Everything we do every single day is geared towards trying to do that. This is still a massively loss-making business. It’s the first loss-making business I have ever been involved with in 30 years. We will become more successful if we have the revenue to spend on players.

FAN: Feels like there is a disconnect between the CEO and the fans?

TOM FOX:“I believe there isn’t. When I’m asked a question about the football club, as chief executive, I’m thinking about the entire football club. Money we spend on the academy, the players, the manager that is designed to give better success on the pitch, that money has to come from somewhere. As a successful chief executive, I have to be able to deliver the revenue we need to be successful. This football club lives and exists for one reason - to play football and make the fans feel proud of it. 

We are failing in that one objective, We are not playing the right football and getting the results that make fans proud. There is absolutely no disconnect. Everything we do every single day is geared towards trying to do that. This is still a massively loss-making business. It’s the first loss-making business I have ever been involved with in 30 years. We will become more successful if we have the revenue to spend on players.

Supporters, not customers!

FAN: I was completely underwhelmed by your appointment Steve. Can I please give you one piece of advice, please don’t call me a customer, I am a supporter of this club. I sincerely wish you all the best. There’s still plenty of points available. But there’s a transfer window currently open and we need a striker and goalkeeper, Are we just chucking the towel in or are we going to try and do something to give us a chance to survive?

STEVE HOLLIS: My apologies for using the word ‘customer’. It was directed at previous businesses who have never actually had supporters. If you look at where this club has spent large amounts of money, it hasn’t actually generated success.It’s not a pretty picture. In the last ten years Randy has spent the third most amount of money. This club has spent £60m in the summer. Last summer it spent £60m on players.

 It’s faced relegation for the last five seasons. You have to put yourself in the position, as a new board, is it credible to go to the shareholder and say let’s spend a ton of money again, even though it hasn’t actually achieved the long-term success? It’s not tackling the major issue of bringing in players and getting the best out of them. We are looking at a number of players in strategic positions. Where the deal is right, let’s see what happens. It would be reckless to put the chequebook away completely, but also it would be irresponsible to throw huge sums of money into a situation that is not working so well.

transfers

TOM FOX: We are active. The manager has been very honest about what he needs. We’re having conversations in several areas. The difficult is we are in the most difficult position in the Premier League to attract players. To attract the players of the quality that Remi Garde wants is a) expensive and b) difficult to convince them knowing that if we are relegated the wage structure needs to change. One of the things we did in the summer was writing reductions into player’s contracts so we are able to keep the squad together. We are trying in the market. We are scouting and recruiting. We are not the most desirable team.

“For the past ten years there are only two clubs where the owner has put more of their own cash in than Aston Villa - Roman Abrahmovic and Abu Dhabi. Randy ranks in the last ten years, third. The issue isn’t that he doesn’t spend, it’s that the decisions aren’t right. He’s been pumping money in for years.

FAN: What was the net spend in the summer?

TOM FOX: The owner put his hand in his pocket for over £23 million this summer.

FAN: This club has a great history and heritage. It’s one of the biggest clubs in the world. If we’re a business how are we going to market it compared to everybody else? We see clubs like Liverpool who haven’t been that successful for 20 years but their players are all over the TV on adverts. How are you going to say that you’re doing the great things to make Aston Villa successful as a business and eventually make us successful on the pitch?

TOM FOX: As I’ve said before those two things are related. You have to decide which audience you are targeting. If we’re sitting bottom of the table there’s very little marketing we can do. We will try to get things better on the pitch. In terms of the global market we’ve actually spent quite a bit of time in the past 14/15 months on this area. 

The challenge now is, whatever we have done commercially, to develop our capability and find international sponsors who can create a bigger audience for us by talking to other people about us. It helps if you’re in the Premier League rather than the Championship. 

We need an organisation who can take advantage of our success but unfortunately we’re not having much success. The commercial capability of the club before was non-existent. Our revenues have changed which is one of the reasons why we find ourselves in the position we are in today. 

The owner spent a lot of money, we finished sixth for three years on the bounce, we should have been tracking larger shirt sponsors at that point and building more fans on a global basis and generating more revenue. Now, we have completely revamped the commercial department and the sales team and we signed a deal with a shirt sponsor that was worth double the previous year. It’s with a company based in California and that company has marketed us to their employees and a global base across the world. 

That’s the type of marketing that we must continue to do. We have a new kit manufacturer coming in next season , who, even if we don’t stay up this season, already has agreed to talk about Aston Villa, the history, the heritage. We are in a better position today to generate more revenue to then spend on the squad. We are struggling right now because the results are making that difficult for us.

"get a hero on the board!"

FAN:This is as bad as the sixties when we went down. We are not shareholders but we do care about this club. I know the last five years there has been a lack of leadership from the owner and involvement with the supporters. You say Randy is the third highest spender, clearly his investments have been poorly managed. The other thing that’s quite obvious is the recruitment policy hasn’t worked. The board is the epitome of that problem because there isn’t enough football people.

HOLLIS: “One thing I said was that I’m not a football person and I’m learning all the time. I’ve spent a lot of time at Bodymoor Heath and I have seen the depth and quality of the football experience. We could bring a ‘name’ in onto the board, someone who is known as a football person. How does that actually enhance the position that we have between the supporters the club and any other stakeholders? What we need to look at is what is the best way, improve the communication between the club and the board.

‘Get a hero on the board’, yelled one fan.

HOLLIS: “So if we promote a well-known football personality onto the board would that change what Tom has alluded to?

FAN You are making mistakes over and over again. I take three kids to the games each week, It’s like child abuse. We need someone on our board who understands football and understands how to make the key decisions. We’re going nowhere at the moment and eventually the younger generation will give up on the club.

"I'm the CEO, I’m accountable, I’m responsible. It’s my responsibility to make sure we don’t put ourselves in the position we are in right now. That’s why I’m sitting here answering questions."

shambles

FAN: Start of season supporters got together to design a mosaic in the Holte End. The mosaic was then decided to be ‘prepared’, the club’s motto. I heard that you vetoed it and didn’t allow it because you thought we weren’t prepared for the season?

TOM FOX: I don’t know where you heard that. I don’t think I vetoed it and I certainly wouldn’t have done it for that reason.

FAN: Felt we needed three or four more weeks of pre-season. What has happened is a complete shambles. This is a complete drop which nobody expected. We were here last year, and you took the lead then, but in terms of the football, you have to take some responsibility. Supporters are struggling to find anyone who’s accountable. Lerner has disappeared, Sherwood has left, it’s too early for Remi Garde, you are the only person who is accountable. How do you view your second season compared to what you expected?

TOM FOX: I’m the CEO, I’m accountable, I’m responsible. It’s my responsibility to make sure we don’t put ourselves in the position we are in right now. That’s why I’m sitting here answering questions. 

We had a very aggressive plan over the summer. I understand there are people who have opinions that the squad isn’t good enough and the players aren’t good enough. 

We had a big job to do based on what the manager at the time inherited as a squad. We had 14 players leave us. I think during Paul Lambert’s reign we signed 27 players, 14 of those went out over the summer, three of those remained the 18/19/20 man squad. 

We had many windows where we didn’t get the right quality, not because it’s Paul’s fault, but because we were not making good decisions. We not actually have a set-up where we have got more of a focus. 

This club never had a director of scouting and recruiting or scouts to cover if a manager said ‘I like this players’ we could then show him an alternative. There are eight full-time scouts working under Paddy Riley and they are watching every player they can possibly watch. All the information that is coming in is much better. 

We have a sporting director who is working on all of the things behind the scenes that make you better - strength & conditioning, physio, doctor, athletic development, analytical breakdown. Everything that the club do above us - the Southampton’s and Watford’s and Leicester’s, we are starting to do, It’s very recent. There are things happening We had a lot to do over the summer. 

Remi is working with the players and he’s actually quite satisfied with what he’s got. We clearly didn’t do everything we needed to do. It was difficult to replace Benteke and Delph when we were already battling relegation with them. 

We’re trying and we were trying to build something while we stayed up, but it’s proving a difficult challenge and there were pieces we didn’t execute. It’s my responsibility. I’m not walking away from that. I came in and for the past 18 months I have lived it every single day to try and get us to a better place. I haven’t done it alone. We try to make the best decisions. We have made some mistakes even since I have been here.

FAN: How do we trust that you’re the right man to lead us after this season because it’s a shambles?

TOM FOX: It’s certainly not where we want to be, Nobody is happy about it. I understand the passion and I understand when you bring your children here and you’re trying to make them into Villa fans and the result isn’t the one you want it to be, I know how difficult that is. 

What I don’t want you to think is that people who work for this club don’t care. I haven’t been a Villa fan for as long as anyone in this room but I have lived this every day. Anyone who knows me know that this club is deeply personal to me. 

This club exists to make the fans proud. All we’re doing is based around that. We are not succeeding right now. We didn’t plan at the start of the season to be in a relegation battle. The fact of the matter is that we have been heading here for four straight years, Even with Delph and Benteke we scraped by last season. That was a massive job to turn it around in one transfer window this summer. We tried but we weren’t successful for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

Why should you trust me? We have more quality in the set up now. I’m telling you Remi Garde is the manager who understands what we’re trying to build. We did not go out to find a manager who would keep us up at all costs. We have done that and made mistake after mistake. 

We wanted someone who believed in the greatness of the club and wanted to put us back on the right track so we were not fighting relegation year after year. We want to get talent in to turn it into great results on the pitch for the fans. All we’re doing in football is for the fans. 

This was a club that needed a massive turnaround, I’ve been here for 17 months or so and Steve has just come in - it still needs a massive turnaround. It’s struggled for a long time. I’m committed to making it better. I didn’t come here to ride some wave of success. I came here because I knew it was going to be difficult. 

I’m committed to seeing it through. Every company I’ve worked for, Gatorade, Pepsi, Nike, it all looks different from the inside, including Villa. It’s got everything we need to be successful. We have enough to put this club back onto a successful path. It’s going to be hard for everyone.

recruitment

FAN: Managers live and die by results, why don’t the recruitment team? Why are we signing players like Ilori and Crespo? Is Paddy Riley a part of the problem?

TOM FOX: “Paddy only came back to the club a couple of months before I came. In that time he’s built the first scouting network we’ve ever hard. Two players you mention, Ilori and Crespo, cost two per-cent of the entire outlay over the summer. No club in football gets everything right. Two-thirds of everything we spent over the summer are part of the matchday XI, really the remaining third are part of the matchday 18. With the exception of those two players, most others are featuring,

“Let me tell you how we buy and sell players because it’s no different to the way other clubs do it. We sat down at the beginning of the season and looked at the full squad. He started moving magnets off to the side about players who weren’t good enough to play the kind of football we told him we want to play - attacking, positive football. 

Tim said we can’t do it with these guys. When you end up moving a lot of those magnets, more than 14 magnets, you end up creating a lot of holes in the squad. No club in football allows one guy to say here’s my list of 15 guys, go and get them for me. It doesn’t work that way. 

What you do is he ends up with some names and what Paddy and the scouts said was, what is it you like about that? From that our scouts are able to take from a huge body of information we have available to us, other suggestions and put them in a list, then the manager is able to debate them. 

We look at every bit of information. In the end you get a list, and it says, I’d love to get this guy first, him second, his third. That’s the process we ran in the summer. The squad we got and you can say they’re not good enough right now, it was a squad that was 2-0 up against Leicester earlier in the season. 

Okay, so we didn’t get everything right. But this squad lost confidence very early in the season, we then lost Amavi and Adama Traore. We probably, if they had stayed fit, still not had enough, but in everyone’s opinion at Bodymoor Heath is that the squad lost confidence. 

We didn’t integrate them properly. It’s very easy to say because they’re bottom they are not good. I have to take a different look at it and talk to people in football like Remi Garde who came in and said ‘I like the players you got in the summer’. We are not where we want to be but the recruitment we did in the summer was aggressive.

what next?

FAN: What is the plan if we go down? How are we going to get back up quickly?

TOM FOX: “There’s a lot of work we need to do between now and the end of the season. There’s two thing that are critical. First, keep the manager. The second, keep this young squad together. I said earlier, we are one of the least desirable teams in the Premier League. 

If we go down into the Championship, Villa is the biggest club in the division by some distance. Because of the parachute payments we become one of the most desirable clubs. If we’re smart about it, we need to build the core of the team. The specifics of that plan, we need to work on between now and the end of the season. Our scouts are already scouting the Championship and lower leagues because that’s what Premier League teams do. We already have quite a bit of knowledge.

FAN: All of our rivals have signed players, we haven’t signed anyone? Why have we given such long-term contracts out to average players? Why was Lambert given a four-year deal? Who is giving these players deals and why haven’t we signed any new players?

TOM FOX: I’ll take the blame for the responsibility for the managers I’ve hired on my watch. We’ve got several conversations ongoing but you have to have a willing seller and a willing buyer and we’re not a desirable location right now. The one thing I can’t recommend is that we take a huge gamble and do something in January that is going to damage our ability to come right back up if we do go down. 

We can try to plug some holes but if we’re foolish and make mistakes in January like we’ve made in the past we will cripple our ability as a club to do the things we need to do in the summer if we’re in the Championship. 

You see some clubs above us spending crazy money on average talent, they are rolling the dice.

Those aren’t clubs that have the same accumulated losses we have they’re not clubs that have the same points that we have. I would be unbelievably irresponsible if I didn’t start to think about if we do go down what do I do to make sure this club is in a good position to come back up financially.”