Villa man seen stumbling out of spanish bar prior to game.

[KevinGage]

I wouldn't dispute any of that.

But isn't it a pretty sad state of a affairs that we didn't even have a relatively modest amount like £6.5 million available without needing to resort to loans, veiled threats to the new owners and all the rest of it?

I don't want to go down this route too much as it was done to death at the time, but one of the supposed plus points of the Ellis years (particularly the last period from about 2000+) was that whilst other clubs might have been more ambitious and suffered peaks and troughs of fortune accordingly, we were on an even keel. Dull, but financially safe and sound.  Yet we were well up on our overdraft facility at the time of his departure, had resorted to selling land to fund player purchases and were (in his words) one mid range transfer fee away from insolvency.

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

As the person who started this thread just a little over 26 hours ago, when I noticed a story in the Sunday Mercury about an elderly gentleman falling down some steps.....its already had over 150 replies and reached page 11.

Well done Doug, you can still provoke as much debate simply slipping over as any player moving to Man City, a drunken brawl breaking out in a Leicestershire hotel, or some 1st year undergraduate law student drop out suing the club for unfair dismissal. Good for you !

[Whiney MacWhineface]

Oh for God's sake. I give up. We weren't insolvent or one Petrov away from insolvency. We were in debt, however. There's a big difference.

[Risso]

The May 2006 accounts showed our current assets as £5m, and our current liabilities, including an overdraft of £12m, as £30m.  That's an unhealthy position to be in, especially with falling turnover and rising costs. 

[KevinGage]

Oh for God's sake. I give up. We weren't insolvent or one Petrov away from insolvency. We were in debt, however. There's a big difference.

So when Herbert said he wouldn't complete the Petrov deal as -if the takeover fell through- we could be insolvent, he actually meant...?

[dave.woodhall]

Petrov and the Serpentine sale were unrelated,  We bought him in August and the car park deal was announced two months earlier.

[Whiney MacWhineface]

Yes the Serpentine deal was done months earlier, but the money from it wasn't due until the autumn. It was this guaranteed income that Ellis gave to Lerner as surety for doing the Petrov deal whilst under takeover rules.

Of course, I could just have imagined this and I'll wake up in the shower.

[cheltenhamlion]

I still have my bit of paper as well by the way

[KevinGage]

Petrov and the Serpentine sale were unrelated,  We bought him in August and the car park deal was announced two months earlier.

Well it kind of is related, in so far as we heard mention of the Serpetine land before we knew of the interest from RL, much less the appointment of MON.

At that stage, it genuinely looked like the projected £7 million from that deal, plus whatever we could cobble together by player sales, was the sum total of what we could hope for.  In an effort to reshape a side that had narrowly avoided the drop. It's fair to say that optimism wasn't at an all time high around that period. Is it really so long ago that people forget?

Fast forward a few months and Herbert was promising his new manager money to spend. He was certain enough to say this, despite the takeover not actually being completed at that stage.  This may or may not have been the Serpentine money (or a loan secured on the basis it was imminent).  Regardless, when it came to the crunch, he was quite prepared to pull the plug on the Petrov deal, as whatever money he had set aside wasn't apparently enough to cover that. Begs the question how much he'd actually set aside for the new manager, or whether there was any money available in the first place.

Just to make it clear, I'm not suggesting we were  on the brink of insolvency. That we were 'doing a Portsmouth' or similar, and were days away from going  broke without RL's intervention. But Herbert saw fit to mention the 'I' word, whether that was genuine or just a negotiating tactic I honestly don't know. Personally I don't think either scenario gives him much credit. If we were genuinely so cash strapped that we didn't have a basic amount like that available that's not particularly healthy.  If we did  have it available, but he wanted the new owner to cough up -and was prepared to use scare tactics about the club going broke to achieve that aim- that paints him in a less than flattering light.

[dave.woodhall]

I think that Doug's idea of insolvency and everyone else's idea are two different things. He was brought up as a child of the depression, and was absolutely paranoid about getting into debt. That was the underlying principle behind his every move, for good or ill.

[KevinGage]

There's probably a degree of truth to that.

My final words on this, I wish him no ill will. He  played a big part in our revival post 1968 (as did Pat Matthews and a few others).  Yes we were still a huge club then, still the most successful (just about) side historically in England despite years of neglect.

But we were in a mess, had no divine right to return to the top, and we could quite easily have gone the way of Huddersfield or Wolves but for the work of Ellis and others.

He deserves his share of the credit for that turnaround, putting the foundations in place for the success of the early 80's and ensuring when he returned (despite relegation) that we maintained our status as one of the bigger clubs in the country.  Even if we were never truly part of the elite again on his watch, and spurned numerous opportunities to become such.

[peter w]

What Doug was or wasn't, is or isn't, I just can't see the point of any ill will towards an old man of 87. Villa fan or not.

[WikiVilla]

Do we know who bought the Serpentine ? One of the big retailers I'd imagine (via an agent)

[dave.woodhall]

Do we know who bought the Serpentine ? One of the big retailers I'd imagine (via an agent)

It was some local government development agency who went out of business soon after.

[WikiVilla]

Is it back on the market then ? They paid top dollar for that site, will be worth a lot less now