Who is the best owner?

[Tugby Villain]

Who is the best owner?

Not our Randy

[SoccerHQ]

I'm tempted to say Bill Kenwright aswell but not sure he's too popular with Evertonian's on the whole.

[Phil from the upper holte]

If Randy Lerner had spent billions on the team and we ended up winning and challening for trophies, but in the process been the biggest c*** by doing things such as shunning Acorns, renaming us Aston Coca Cola Villa and saying Birmingham is a shit hole, Villa fans would think he's the greatest owner ever.

No they wouldn't, because the fans would not have accepted the name of Aston Villa to change in the first place.

I gurantee the vast majority wouldn't have cared if Villa had won the league.

As someone who knows more about the politics of the Villa and the psyche of our supporters down the ages than any of us said at the time of the Witton Lane re-naming "If we win the league they could call it the Adolf Hitler stand and nobody would care."

They just called it the Doug Ellis stand for short

[Mortimer's Bear]

What's wrong with the Man City owners?

They've poured money into the club, but they've also barely put a foot wrong, done lots of work in the local deprived community etc etc.

They're members of a family which, in their own country, throws not only political opponents into jail but also their political opponents' lawyers, routinely employs slave-labour on a mass-scale, is deeply connected to many nasty climate-change denying propeganda organisations in order to protect the oil by which they make the astonishing sums of wealth that remain conspicuously monopolised by the extreme wealthiest in that country and never to help their population, a population squashed under the most strictly-imposed aspects of Sharia while the Mansours live their astonishing playboy lifestyles. They're evil, dictatorial, hypocritical murderers and crooks.

Apart from that?

[Chris Smith]

Everton have a good owner. Sensibly run, competitive for the guts of a decade, can keep hold of their better players when big clubs come sniffing and can finance big deals for the right players.

Take note Randy.

Remind me again who Arteta and Rooney play for?

As it happens I agree that they do seem well run, based on stability and long term planning, but like almost everyone else they have to sell from time to time to help finance it.

[SamTheMouse]

I still think Lerner's a decent owner. He's discreet, professional in his dealings, he's ploughed money into the club, its facilities and the local community. He showed too much faith in O'Neill, but he's not the first to have made that mistake. Houllier was a left-field appointment, but there was a sound logic to it. Lambert was a popular appointment with the vast majority of fans. And I kind of respect him sticking by his man, come what may. He wants long-term stability and that means enduring bad times without flinching.

About the only thing he's really got wrong - and I grant you it's a clanger of titanic proportions - was to bring in McLeish, a decision that I still can't fathom to this day.

[Dribbler]

What's the criteria for a good owner? If you take the emotion out of it, and just judge an owner by what he does or has done financially for the club including backing the manager in the market, or improvements to the facilities and work in the community then Randy has to be one of the best. But if you think this thread is going to go one page before Randy gets called a prick, or equivalent then that's not going to happen. A lot of other fans would love to have our owner looking at purely the facts of his backing and support of the club since 2006.

You haven't really set down much of criteria for a good owner though have you. Randy in my eyes meets many of the criteria of a good owner: Nice guy = yes, respects the history of the club = yes, has invested in the infrastructure of the club = yes, has done a lot of good for the community and charity = yes, has invested large amounts of money in the team (over the years) = yes. All good so far then.

However... most of this has been let down by his own stupidity and naivety.

Let's focus first on the element  you highlight, 'backing the manager'. Randy has thrown an awful lot of money into this club over the years in regards to buying players and financing wages, unfortunately the verb i use there, 'thrown' is probably apt. His decision making from a footballing perspective has been awful. Yes he threw a lot of money into the club at the start, but it wasn't prudent investment in a sustainable model, it was literally in so many cases throwing money at a problem which he was unlikely to ever get back. That we've had to undergo the depressing cut backs over the last few years that we have, are of course, all his own fault in the first place. He overspent in an unsustainable manner and then had to try and get us back on a sustainable route.

His bad decisions then re having no footballing nous in his management team, in choosing bad managers and allowing them to give out unsustainable and bad contracts, in not choosing managers that had a consistent footballing ethos so that the next manager could pick up and build on what the previous manager had done, have led us to where we are. With the investment and money that have been put in this club since he has been here, we should be in a far better position than we are and should still be around those upper table spots with a strong squad of players. We wouldn't have to be completely rebuilding the squad and rebuilding on the miserly budget we have if he'd made the correct decisions along the road that he should have. The buck stops with him for everything that has happened since his tenure at the club.

Lastly, Randy seems to have forgotten the most important thing. As a business consultant there is one thing that crops up again and again about what makes a business successful and it's this simple rule... never forget what your core proposition is and make sure that this, among all other things, is what you get right.

As a football club, our core proposition is this... football! The thing that we play week in week out on that 115 by 72 yard patch of grass. This is primarily what the company and football club Aston Villa is all about, and he has failed us dismally in this regard year in year out. Football supporters want to see football, and good football at that, and especially at home. All the other stuff is the trimmings, yep it's great to have a good training complex, a great ground with historic features restored and good drinks and pies, a renovated pub, charity restaurant and gardens, charitable partnerships, good merchandising and so on, but without good football that satisfies it's core supporters, it will all fade away into nothing.

Randy then seems to have forgotten our core proposition, football, and for any owner/leader of a company that can be a fatal mistake. I can only think that he's sees us as a business, not a football club that has to be ran as a business. How else could he watch the dire turgid rubbish that has been served up for the majority of the last few years. He's an owner that looks at financial statistics and fails to see that we're not delivering in our core proposition.

As for who is the best owner, well to my mind it has to be the Jo Lewis/Levy combination. Whatever you think of Tottenham, i think they've perhaps been the shrewdest club in the premier league in their buying and selling. Yes far from perfect, as i expect any owner is, but how we can only dream that we'd been ran like them in the last few years.

[Toronto Villa]

Everton have a good owner. Sensibly run, competitive for the guts of a decade, can keep hold of their better players when big clubs come sniffing and can finance big deals for the right players.

Take note Randy.

Remind me again who Arteta and Rooney play for?

As it happens I agree that they do seem well run, based on stability and long term planning, but like almost everyone else they have to sell from time to time to help finance it.

Don't disagree but I do love hindsight. Everton have been pleading poverty for years now. Kenwright was for many years actively trying to sell the club. Everton have sat in the bottom 3 or close to it in December a few years back. The fact that in almost as long as us they have won fuck all. It's all good well after all of these years looking at them and thinking that's the way to run a club, but nobody ever sees what happened in detail during that time. Everton fans have been livid during those player sales, during those lean years, playing 4-6-0 formations or early cup exits. The problem is we analyze our club with a fine tooth comb and then only look at the highlights elsewhere. Things aren't great for us right at this minute theres no denying that. But Everton didn't get to where they are today without a number of difficult years even as they advocated stability with one manager.

[Richard E]

Everton's last trophy was in fact longer ago than ours.

[Damo70]

If Randy Lerner had spent billions on the team and we ended up winning and challening for trophies, but in the process been the biggest c*** by doing things such as shunning Acorns, renaming us Aston Coca Cola Villa and saying Birmingham is a shit hole, Villa fans would think he's the greatest owner ever.

No they wouldn't, because the fans would not have accepted the name of Aston Villa to change in the first place.

I gurantee the vast majority wouldn't have cared if Villa had won the league.

As someone who knows more about the politics of the Villa and the psyche of our supporters down the ages than any of us said at the time of the Witton Lane re-naming "If we win the league they could call it the Adolf Hitler stand and nobody would care."

They just called it the Doug Ellis stand for short

Why name it after the bloke who lost the war when you can name it after the bloke who single handedly won it.

[Villa in Denmark]

The flippant answer to the original question has to be Carsen Yeung.

[olaftab]

Everton have a good owner. Sensibly run, competitive for the guts of a decade, can keep hold of their better players when big clubs come sniffing and can finance big deals for the right players.

Take note Randy.

Remind me again who Arteta and Rooney play for?

As it happens I agree that they do seem well run, based on stability and long term planning, but like almost everyone else they have to sell from time to time to help finance it.

And Fellaini and I have no doubt Barkley will go in the summer. Everton have become the flavour of the day now as they have been lucky with some loan signings but no doubt will finish 7th.

[olaftab]

What's wrong with the Man City owners?

They've poured money into the club, but they've also barely put a foot wrong, done lots of work in the local deprived community etc etc.

They're members of a family which, in their own country, throws not only political opponents into jail but also their political opponents' lawyers, routinely employs slave-labour on a mass-scale, is deeply connected to many nasty climate-change denying propeganda organisations in order to protect the oil by which they make the astonishing sums of wealth that remain conspicuously monopolised by the extreme wealthiest in that country and never to help their population, a population squashed under the most strictly-imposed aspects of Sharia while the Mansours live their astonishing playboy lifestyles. They're evil, dictatorial, hypocritical murderers and crooks.

Sorry. I just really hate those people.

Well said Monty. Dreadful horrible people. Last year something like 700 young men died working on construction sites around the Gulf due to diabolical health and safety issues.  Their poor families on the Indian sub-continent had to pay to have their bodies returned home.

[tomd2103]

I still think Lerner's a decent owner. He's discreet, professional in his dealings, he's ploughed money into the club, its facilities and the local community. He showed too much faith in O'Neill, but he's not the first to have made that mistake. Houllier was a left-field appointment, but there was a sound logic to it. Lambert was a popular appointment with the vast majority of fans. And I kind of respect him sticking by his man, come what may. He wants long-term stability and that means enduring bad times without flinching.

About the only thing he's really got wrong - and I grant you it's a clanger of titanic proportions - was to bring in McLeish, a decision that I still can't fathom to this day.

Agree with that, but I would also say that not appointing someone who understands how football works in this country to a senior position at the club was another huge mistake.  Faulkner seems to be gettings some things right off the field, but judging by his comments in he media over the years, doesn't have much of an understanding about on-the-field issues. 

The fact that the kind of comments we are seeing in this thread mirror exactly the kind of comments made by Cleveland Browns fans a few years ago can't be coincidence. 

[ADVILLAFAN]

In some ways Gibson at Middlesbrough seems pretty decent, although he has also made some poor choices in terms of manager and let them waste huge amounts of money. Definitely seems to have the club's best interests at heart.

Don't think they'd have had so many Premier League seasons without his investment, their fan support wasn't very good.