Aston Villa chairman Doug Ellis has hit back hard at yesterday’s statement reputedly from the Aston Villa squad berating him for a lack of investment in the club and for a series of petty cost cutting measures.

In a statement to the club’s official website Villa head of media and communications Phil Mepham said:

“The chairman is furious, because he has had no indication from any member of the playing or coaching staff of any dissatisfaction at the training ground. So this has come as a great surprise.”

“Once the ’story’ broke, I spoke to several senior members of the first-team squad, all of whom had no knowledge of the statement. All of them were surprised at its content. So to suggest this is a collective statement is ridiculous.”

With the season less than a month away and Villa fans becoming increasingly edgy over the lack of positive transfer activity, yesterday’s statement from the players seemed to be a direct message to the board that all was not well at the club but in true Doug Ellis style, it seems like he is ready to just bury his head in the sand and resist all calls for his departure or for adequate resources to be made available to the coaching staff.

It could be a long, hard season at Villa Park for all concerned.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 15th, 2006 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Aston Villa. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.