I apologise for the lack of posts the last couple of days, I’ve been furiously coding and I’m reasonably optimistic that I can start shipping components of the new site live today. If all goes to plan (and I use the word ‘plan’ in the absolute loosest sense of the word) I could well be in a position to switch over completely late tonight. If that’s the case then there will be an hour or two of downtime, but it will be late night/early morning GMT so most of you will be unaffected.

On to one or two things that have caught my eye this week and gone unmentioned. Firstly, the accounts have obviously been picked up and commented on in many places. For the most part, the reaction is pretty good and the majority of fans seem to trust Randy Lerner’s leadership, if that’s the right word – ownership is probably better. I’m still digesting the balance sheet and at some point I intend to do a mini-series breaking down sections of interest and explaining what’s going on.

Money For Nothing

Staying on that subject briefly; I just wanted to follow up on a point I made in the last post on the accounts regarding monies being paid to Reform Acquisitions LLC, which basically means Randy in America. There’s two elements to this; interest on loan notes and a “management fee”, and I just wanted to clear up some confusion I had last time I wrote.

Firstly, the interest on the loan notes. I suspected that The Telegraph were selling me a dummy when they claimed that the loans were interest free and I was right; they’re not interest free. At the time the accounts were closed Randy had issued a total of £84.5m in loan notes, including £35m during the 2008/09 financial year. According to the accounts, interest paid on loans notes during the year was £4.5m. There are certainly places out there that a billionaire can stick his money and get a better return.

To quote Randy himself:- “You can get more out of buying a 30-year bond – I’d be poolside and I cordless! But where’s the fun?” Exactly!

The management fee is more curious as it’s not really clear what it’s for and there wasn’t a similar charge in the previous year’s accounts. So far as I’ve noticed it only appears in the notes and there is no line item for it which may be quite revealing. Here’s the specific wording in the accounts:-

During the year, management charges totalling £7,652,748 (2008 £nil) were incurred from Reform Acquisitions LLC, the ultimate holding company. At the year end, £7,652,748 (2008 £nil) remained outstanding.

What exactly that charge is for and whether it will eventually have to be paid or not is unknown. All we know for sure is that the only money that went back to America, as it were, from Aston Villa during 2008/09 was the £4.5m interest on the loan notes.

Sali – Salifou

Moustapha Salifou played only his second reserve game since the bus shooting incident this week so hopefully he’ll be back to write these round-ups soon. I think we’ll all be glad of that, there’s no way he’d be banging on about the accounts!!

Speaking of that reserve game (I know, worst seque ever), it was only a 4-0 destruction of the Blues by the way. Goals from Albrighton, the league’s top scorer; Andreas Weimann, and two from Delfouneso keep the reigning champions flying high at the top of the Premier Reserve League South table.

It’s interesting to note that Man Utd, Man City & Liverpool top the northern league while Villa, Arsenal & Chelsea top the south. An indication of the formation of a new “big six” perhaps? Of course, there’s no Tottenham in there since they made the inexplicable decision to pull out of reserve league football. Well, it seems inexplicable on the face of it, but maybe they’re on to something.  I’ll save that discussion for another time though.

FA Cup

I put this info out on Twitter and updated the original post, but just in case you’ve been living in a cockrel’s boot; the FA Cup Semi-Final between Aston Villa and Chelsea will be played at Wembey (duh!) on Saturday April 10th, kick off at 5pm.

Portsmouth will play either Fulham or Tottenham the following day, but kick off will be at 4pm.

There’s an old cliche that says it’s worse to lose in a semi-final than it is in a final, but I’m not so sure about that – it’s pretty crappy losing at any stage in my opinion!  There’s another cliche that says in order to win the trophy you have to beat the best, so why not face Chelsea now?

To me, it make no difference when we play them, my only disappointment being – and no disrespect to the other 3 teams, forgive my bias – I think Villa vs Chelsea would have have made the better final out of the teams remaining.  It would also have provided a suitable opportunity to make amends for our last FA Cup final appearance, coincidentally against Chelsea 10 years ago, when we really didn’t give a particularly good account of ourselves.

Another coincidence is that like having to play Man Utd in the Premiership shortly before facing them again in the Carling Cup final, we also have to play Chelsea in the league just 10 days or so before taking them on again at Wembley.  I think I can safely speak for the overwhelming majority of Villa fans when I say that I’d happily take a loss at Stamford Bridge if it meant a win at Wembley.

Stoke

I generally don’t do previews anymore, but it would be remiss not to mention that it’s a welcome return to Premiership action tomorrow in Stoke in what I see as an important gateway to a run of games that have the potential to yield a shed load of lovely points.

Stoke have the ability to be a complete irritant though and I suspect this will be one of those games where there’s not a great deal of attractive football, but it’s only the result that matters to me. Gabby should be available again, but there’s been talk of a virus possibly running through the squad, so we wait to see whether it claims any more victims…. *cough* Heskey *cough*. Failing that, MON has a selection headache up front, but has challenged his strikers to score more goals – gotta love those obvious headlines this week!

And Finally…

0% Villa, but as it’s Friday you really ought to head over to Off The Post to view a couple of vids they have of Jimmy Bullard doing a new Wash and Go advert. Genius stuff from Jimmy!!