The Takeover Thread - Recon Group - NOW WITH NEW POLL

[Chris Smith]

I can't see how anyone can read that article and feel negative about it.
He's still looking to sell, and when he does sell he wants it to be to someone with the resources and competence to take the club forward. In the meantime he intends to make changes at board level to benefit the running of the club.
It would be very easy to sell to the first consortium of would-be asset strippers who cobble together the asking price.

I agree with you DeKuip, to me it's a positive article and good to hear some plans from him!

Is how I read it too. He hasn't always got things right but I believe his heart was always in the right place.

They key is now to sell to the right person/people and look at how we can emulate the clubs who have progressed in recent years such as Southampton and Swansea.

[Olof's Beard]

There's an article linked on Football365 with the headline 'Lerner to Quit as Villa Chairman if Fails to Sell Club' but you try and click on it and it says 'article is not available'.

[OzVilla]

I too don't see to much doom in what Randy said. It very disappointing considering the climate when he arrived that he lost interest so quickly but he's being honest and obviously cares about our future.

We need the right buyers though and I think this is one area where I still do trust Lerner. Hope I'm not wrong on that and we get the right people in.

[Legion]

Randy Lerner, in a candid interview, explains why he takes responsibility for Aston Villa’s league failings
Randy Lerner was on holiday in Barbados a few months ago when he felt a tap on the shoulder, turned around and found himself facing Martin O’Neill. The last time they had spent any hours together was with teams of expensive lawyers in a bitter, scarring employment tribunal, but, over a couple of days in the Caribbean, they sat by the pool and in the bar reminiscing, remembering the good times.
They talked fondly about when Villa finished sixth in the table three years running, knocking on the door of that elite Champions League club, happy days with Ashley Young, James Milner, Stewart Downing flying down the wings, before disagreements over spending and direction and control in 2010.
Lerner may yet have an unexpectedly joyous conclusion to his regime if Villa win their first trophy in almost 20 years on Saturday, but that chance encounter only emphasised how much it had gone sour, for Lerner, for Villa, since that acrimonious parting.
Things did not work out as intended in so many ways. Lerner had planned to move to England, owning properties in London and the Midlands, but family life and business kept him in the United States. As he became more distant, Villa lurched from Gérard Houllier (one season before heart trouble) to Alex McLeish (one season of fan antipathy) to Paul Lambert (two and a half moribund campaigns including an ill-judged double act with the brooding Roy Keane).
Instead of knocking on the door of the elite, Villa have spent the past couple of seasons perilously close to the trapdoor of relegation. An American billionaire with the Villa tattoo and good intentions has ended up battered by fans who once saw him as a welcome replacement to “Deadly” Doug Ellis.
“However much I know that being a football chairman carries with it brutal criticism, my love for Villa makes the negativity pretty biting at times,” Lerner said this week in a rare interview.
“On the other hand, the club’s performance over the last five or so years has left quite a lot to be desired and that falls squarely on my shoulders. Happily we’ve not been relegated, but I haven’t gotten it nearly right enough. So what reaction would I expect?”
Lerner, 53, holds his hands up about his mistakes, and especially the difficulty of trying to be an executive chairman while juggling all aspects of a busy life. Villa needed direction. “The responsibilities that I have at home, in the US, both personal and professional come first,” he says, candidly. “If I lived and worked in England, it would be entirely different matter.”
He still runs numerous businesses passed down by his father, who died 13 years ago, and was effectively a single parent for nine years. A few years ago he decided to cut down his commitments including sports ownership, selling the Cleveland Browns and pulling out of Villa for several reasons.
“Why? I’m a believer in flux. In change,” he says. “Some of my career goals have shifted. My appetite for the media exposure has certainly waned and just simply my feeling that I’m not the right guy any more for the job.”
Absenteeism is one criticism levelled at him by Villa fans, but he decided not to show up at games purely for the sake of it. “I knew that the answer was not to pander to the criticism, but rather to fix or address the issue,” he says from his home in Long Island.
He recruited Tom Fox from Arsenal to be chief executive and began to hand over responsibilities, including the managerial search that led to the galvanising appointment of Tim Sherwood in February.
“That was driven by Tom,” he says. “When Tom came to Villa last summer, we had an explicit understanding that he was going to run the club day to day. With respect to making a change as manager, he had detailed criteria that addressed the short and long term. Given those, he felt that Tim was uniquely suited and available.”
It has been a long time — O’Neill’s days — since Villa have punched close to their wage bill and Lerner admits envy for the work at Southampton and Swansea City, in particular. He hopes that Sherwood can bring significant improvements to scouting and recruitment. “Tim and I have had three or four good visits since he’s come,” he says. “He’s become Villa very quickly.”
Lerner is hopeful that the new combination of Sherwood and Fox, a positive end to the season and the guarantee of TV riches to come make it more likely that a buyer will be found this summer than last.
But what of the restraints of Financial Fair Play that could mean Villa, even if they did get everything right as a business, could once again hit that glass ceiling that they reached under O’Neill? Is there not a futility for a club outside the top four?
“That’s a tough one,” Lerner says. “I recently met a cardiologist in America who was from Dublin originally, who had been a Chelsea fan until, he said, they started buying players in the current fashion and at their current levels. My point is that it can cut both ways.
“Sure, facing clubs with vastly larger payrolls can be dispiriting, but, there are always other angles. The big clubs also provide important liquidity for smaller clubs. For clubs like Southampton and Swansea, their ability to sell players at premium prices wisely has been, to my mind, a key part of their ascent and their increasingly established position in the top half.
“My view is that a compelling sort of football ecosystem has evolved in the English league that not only benefits those clubs that are extremely well run with effective academies, but has also become the place of stunning competitive rivalries and unforeseen achievements.”
Villa’s run to the FA Cup final could certainly be included as unexpected. It gives Lerner a chance to say an upbeat farewell after nine years if Villa can win the competition for the first time since 1957, their first trophy since the League Cup in 1996. He will be in the stands with family at Wembley. He has promised to step down as chairman even if he cannot sell Villa this summer, and English football will say goodbye to one of the more eclectic characters.
Talking of Villa attracting global interest, Lerner says it is “kind of like a Boetti Mappa”, citing the work of the Italian conceptual artist.
Among his future intentions is to write a book, saying that his inspirations include Geoffrey Barraclough and Llewellyn Woodward, the late British historians. “So something straightforward and simple,” he laughs.
He wants more time for other projects and says it is not that he has stopped wanting the best for Villa, but simply about priorities. The big mistake was not bringing in someone earlier to fill his role when he realised that he could not devote the attention.
The fans will have their own deep frustrations, but Lerner has no regrets about becoming involved nine years ago even if, when he sells, he will have lost some of his considerable fortune.
He would do it again, but bumping into O’Neill heightened his own sense of “what ifs” and hopes that were never fulfilled. Soon it will be someone else’s turn.
Hiring and firing
Since buying Aston Villa for £62.6 million in September 2006, Randy Lerner has hired five full-time managers
Martin O’Neill August 2006-August 2010
2006-07 finished 11th; 2007-08 6th; 2008-09 6th; 2009-10 6th
The Northern Irishman and Lerner lift the team after David O’Leary’s dismal spell. They reach the 2010 League Cup final, losing to Manchester United, and fall short of Champions League qualification. O’Neill quits five days before the start of the 2010-11 season
Gérard Houllier (September 2010-April 2011)
2010-11 9th
The Frenchman, who bought Darren Bent from Sunderland for £18 million, never looks a long-term appointment and cedes charge to Gary McAllister, his assistant, from April 2011, over ill health
Alex McLeish (June 2011-May 2012)
2011-12 16th
Villa finish two points clear of the relegation zone in his one season before the deeply unpopular former Birmingham City manager is sacked
Paul Lambert June 2012-February 2015)
2012-13 15th; 2013-14 15th
The Scot is unable to arrest the slide despite the form of Christian Benteke. Many managers would not have survived a two-leg League Cup semi-final defeat by Bradford City, of Sky Bet League Two, in his second season. Sacked after a terrible run of results
Tim Sherwood (February 2015-present)
2014-15 17th
The former Tottenham Hotspur head coach achieves Premier League safety with a game to spare and reaches the FA Cup final after semi-final success against Liverpool

[DeKuip]

I can't see how anyone can read that article and feel negative about it.
He's still looking to sell, and when he does sell he wants it to be to someone with the resources and competence to take the club forward. In the meantime he intends to make changes at board level to benefit the running of the club.
It would be very easy to sell to the first consortium of would-be asset strippers who cobble together the asking price.

I agree with you DeKuip, to me it's a positive article and good to hear some plans from him!

It also means Benteke will probably go to a club who are backed financially to achieve success and Cleverley may see things in the same light
and sign for a progressive club somewhat further up the table, and if Randy wants to put in another Chairman tell me what powers will he/she have. I will tell you. None at all!

If Benteke wants to move on he'll do so whoever owns the club, and you'd imagine for reasons of playing Champions League or competing for a league title. If the wealthiest man in the world bought us next week it would still take at least three or four years to even get a sniff of having a team at that level.

[Phil from the upper holte]

If Martin O Neill tapped me on the shoulder I'd have pushed the ****** in the pool

[pauliewalnuts]

If Martin O Neill tapped me on the shoulder I'd have pushed the c*** in the pool

ha ha, excellent.

[Monty]

Yep, he's a lunatic.

[Ron Manager]

This Boetti geezer is Italian so I am told. Is he a Maldini lookalike who can perform miracles at left back? Perhaps we can get him to change his name by deed poll to Richardson and solve another problem
for Saturday. Randy seems to think the Italians have 'a fondness' for Villa...and the Chinese too so it seems.

I think he is going mad.

[Toronto Villa]

I can't see how anyone can read that article and feel negative about it.
He's still looking to sell, and when he does sell he wants it to be to someone with the resources and competence to take the club forward. In the meantime he intends to make changes at board level to benefit the running of the club.
It would be very easy to sell to the first consortium of would-be asset strippers who cobble together the asking price.

I agree with you DeKuip, to me it's a positive article and good to hear some plans from him!

Is how I read it too. He hasn't always got things right but I believe his heart was always in the right place.

They key is now to sell to the right person/people and look at how we can emulate the clubs who have progressed in recent years such as Southampton and Swansea.

Same here. I don't see the negativity. It seemed he had really high hopes when it all started out and it didn't go as planned. He now wants to ensure the club is sold to the right people who will take an interest in building the club not just anyone with money.

[pauliewalnuts]

There is an argument to be had over the way he's run the club over the last four or five years - he admits that himself - but I don't really see much wrong with that article.

We're all taking the piss out of him for his bizarre cultural references (again), but ultimately, he's saying pretty much what we would have wanted him to say, surely?

[The Man With A Stick]

The criticism Lerner's had has been nothing compared to the stick Doug got for 20+ years.  Most of the managers have ended up taking the flak and I think he's got off pretty lightly.

[pauliewalnuts]

The criticism Lerner's had has been nothing compared to the stick Doug got for 20+ years.  Most of the managers have ended up taking the flak and I think he's got off pretty lightly.

In fairness to Randy, he's run us pretty abysmally these last few years, but to lump him in with a comparison to Ellis is extremely harsh on him.

Even if we can get past that, I also think that living 3000 miles away in That America makes it easier to avoid than living in Little Aston or wherever it is Doug lives these days.

[Clampy]

He came with the best of intentions,  he made mistakes but he had a go and the money he lost went into the club. I've got no problem with him whatsoever.

[mr underhill]

just to be clear, you're referring to Randy right?