Randy Lerner

[saunders_heroes]

I'm behind you 100% with your anti Lerner stance but I still don't think we'll go down.

S_H, I never thought I'd say this, but...what makes you so optimistic? *winky thing*

Blind optimism I think. I keep telling myself that it isn't the month of May just yet and there's loads of games left to play. And perhaps Garde will get some of his own players in January. I refuse to believe he took the job with little or no money to spend.

[Chris Harte]

I've asked you this before, but I'll try again.
How much do you think Lerner should have continued to invest, bearing that the current tab is north of £250M?

Background info before answering.

1. Abramovich, a man who's worth around 10 times Lerner's personal net worth, put the best part of £1 billion into Chelsea over a 10 year period before pretty much calling a halt.  They still spend plenty "net" but it's almost all covered by CL and associated TV income.

2. The Mansoors, who to all intents and purposes have limitless wealth,  put the best part of £1.2 billion into Man City over a 5-6 year period before reigning in the chequebook. Again they spend plenty "net"  but it's almost all covered by CL and associated TV income.

3. "Enough" or similar isn't an answer. A number be it £1 or £10 billion or anywhere in between.

I think I've read somewhere recently that Villa's net spend over the last five seasons is something like £55M in total for that period. I don't know if that is accurate or not, but if it is than it doesn't seem alot when you consider that even the bottom placed team in the league earns upwards of £60M (http://www.sportingintelligence.com/2014/05/14/where-the-money-went-liverpool-top-premier-league-prize-cash-in-2013-14-140501/) from the deal in place for 2013-2016. The article points out that TV money from foreign deals is on top of this.

(The article states that Villa earned £72M for 2013-14, up £27M from the £45M earned the season before).

Undoubtedly some of the money coming into the club has gone on player wages, but when you consider a player on a reported £70k p/w is on £3.64M per year, the knowledge that they don't all get that (notice that I don't use the word "earn") must make one wonder where the TV money is all going.

This is conjecture, but if we assumed TV earnings for the last five seasons were £42M*, £45M*, £72M*, £65M & £65M per season in that order then that is £289M that has come/is coming into the club.

* denotes figure from the provided link or links within that link.

So to answer the original question, maybe if Lerner's cuts hadn't gone so deep and the net spend per season was, say £25M, then maybe we wouldn't be in the desperate straights that we currently find ourselves. True to say that there are no guarantees in this game, but maybe we wouldn't be feeling like Lerner had trashed the club.

[pauliewalnuts]

Undoubtedly some of the money coming into the club has gone on player wages, but when you consider a player on a reported £70k p/w is on £3.64M per year, the knowledge that they don't all get that (notice that I don't use the word "earn") must make one wonder where the TV money is all going.

You can find that out by taking a look at the accounts.

There isn't an easy way to take money out of the club on the quiet, if that's what you're suggesting.

Lerner seems to me to be a man who was an enthusiastic idiot for five years, then an unenthusiastic idiot for another five years. One thing that is way, way wide of the mark, though, is the suggestion that he hasn't put huge amounts of money into the club - he has.

He's written off enormous amounts of money he put into the club as loans. He has slammed the brakes on the spending in recent years, yes, but he's lost a fortune on us.

[Villa in Denmark]

I'd agree with pretty much all of that Chris, but then it's a bit more considered and nuanced than just throw money at it.

The one thing that does skew those figures a bit is the Benteke sale. If he'd gone for a "normal" mark up on a player in his price range that came over and did OK, £12-18M would maybe have been the normal expected.  That would nave put the net spend up from £11M to around £15M. Still not great, but compared to what some of the teams that have gone sailing past us have spent, not in completely the wrong ball park.

There have been 3 building blocks to our current plight in my eyes.

1. Allowing MON unfettered access to the safe with no oversight, then not reacting when he reacted violently to any attempts to impose oversight.  Apparently he saw off 2 CEO's before Randy & Faulkner called him to account and flounced off.
2.The lack of structure that was the other price of MON meant that we lurched through the well documented madness of recent managerial appointments without any thought as to what we were going to do next.
3. If you're going to manage the club as described in point 2, that costs more than doing how we're now trying to do it, and there an extra £10M per year would have gone a long way (with a decent manager)

[ChicagoLion]

Undoubtedly some of the money coming into the club has gone on player wages, but when you consider a player on a reported £70k p/w is on £3.64M per year, the knowledge that they don't all get that (notice that I don't use the word "earn") must make one wonder where the TV money is all going.

You can find that out by taking a look at the accounts.

There isn't an easy way to take money out of the club on the quiet, if that's what you're suggesting.

Lerner seems to me to be a man who was an enthusiastic idiot for five years, then an unenthusiastic idiot for another five years. One thing that is way, way wide of the mark, though, is the suggestion that he hasn't put huge amounts of money into the club - he has.

He's written off enormous amounts of money he put into the club as loans. He has slammed the brakes on the spending in recent years, yes, but he's lost a fortune on us.

I have not studied the accounts in detail but my guess is that Lerner is down about £200 to  £230 million based on investment+ loans less Interest and Management Charges recieved. is that about right?

[pbavfckuwait]

I would think it is very hard for anyone to not agree that Lerner has spent plenty on the club and that most of that has come from his own fortune, but again this just highlights his total lack of football nous, if we are spending 15 mill net over the last 5 years, you will arrive at the place we are now, that is one average to good prem player 15 millions worth.
We have seen in the past that sound bites were given out to describe the clubs buying policy, young and hungry etc, etc, but the proof is there has not been a policy and the sudden lurch to establish one, I believe has left us where we are at present, instead of gradually establishing a process where we buy players that may increase in value, we have tried to do it overnight after losing our main reason (Benteke) for still being in the prem and the squad may indeed improve over time with the players bought this summer, problem being most of them I am sure will have relegation clauses and the club would not probably be able to sustain their present wage structure, so come Summer 2016 awaiting a Championship season we are back to square one of having to replace large numbers of a squad as again we enter a 2 or 3 year cycle where we may guarantee to get some of the waste from previous buying policies, see CNZ, Joe Cole and the likes. 10 years to get us to where we are now, god knows how many years to correct it, that will be Randy's legacy.

[brian green]

I agree wholeheartedly Kuwait. It is widely accepted that Lerner has been naive in football matters but I think our perfect storm is also in large measure due to his business naivety.  In any business however large or small your capital has to be deployed like petrol to the engine of a car. The flow has to be controlled to deliver sustained momentum.  Randy's investment was excessively front end loaded and MON duly obliged. Since then we have paid the price of clawing our way back to financial stability with predictable performance consequences.
In the period of financial retrenchment we have had managers without sufficient brain power to halt the downward drift. All three of Remi's immediate predecessors have had a cock-shy at the problem, anti football of McLeish, young and hungry of Lambert, old and available of Lambert, bomb squaddery of Lambert, not-me-guv I wanted Adebayor, Townsend, Lennon and Berbatov of Sherwood.

The choice that faces us is a very stark one.  If we are too far adrift in January we have to use what is left of this season to prepare for the future.  All the Lerner bashing is not going to rewrite a single line of the last five years of Aston Villa's history.  Randy Lerner is not going to be transformed into a Mansoor or an Abramovich. We have to rebuild the team with the tools and materials at hand.

Kuwait you mention the running of club communication by sound bites and that is one very important area we can improve without costing a penny. Take the supporters into the club's confidence, not treated on a need to know basis.

[Chris Harte]

All the Lerner bashing is not going to rewrite a single line of the last five years of Aston Villa's history. 

This is of course correct, however supporters up and down the country feel the need to vent their fury, their unhappiness, their dis-satisfaction when they see things are not rosy and they feel that their chairman is largely to blame. Why would Villa's support be any different?

We have to rebuild the team with the tools and materials at hand.

What if those tools and materials are not sufficient to do the job? The Roman Empire was once a great empire, just as Aston Villa were once a great football club.

Building from stone and timber alone will not produce the Apollo Program.

[peter w]

Right, let me try and pick the positives from our current malaise.

If we go down then clearly lerner has the same two options of selling up or not. If he does sell up the price drops and given that Lerner seems to be keen to sell only to the right people, then a cheaper price may induce someone to fancy the club knowing the spending well next summer would mean going into the riches of the Premier League.

Conversely, lerner may decide that he doesn't want to take the hit on the clubs worth which would drop in the Championship so could decide to spend heavily next summer to make sure we are prime placed to get back up.

I think we'll know the mindset come January and whether Garde has the funds and the contacts, and the ability to persuade, to throw at it.

[wolfman999]

If Lerner has really spent the sums mentioned to produce the Car crash our club has been for the last 5/6 years, it just proves what a useless incompetent cock he truly is. A fool and his money ...

[brian green]

My younger son who has been with me on the Holte since he needed a milk crate and I, sitting in the queue for the Channel Tunnel decided that all this recent publicity for Doug meant one thing. The old rogue is going to buy the club back.

[pauliewalnuts]

Right, let me try and pick the positives from our current malaise.

If we go down then clearly lerner has the same two options of selling up or not. If he does sell up the price drops and given that Lerner seems to be keen to sell only to the right people, then a cheaper price may induce someone to fancy the club knowing the spending well next summer would mean going into the riches of the Premier League.

They're not really 'options', though, are they? I mean, he has decided to sell up before and not managed it. Wanting to sell and actually being able to are totally different things.

FWIW I think your scenario whereby he waits and gets us back into the top flight before selling is far more likely.

He's managed to sit out the last four or five years, I reckon he'd sit out another one if the alternative was losing even more money as we were not a top flight club any more.

Typing that ^^ line made me feel physically sick.

What a horrible state of affairs.

[ronshirt]

Mr Lerner gambled a great deal of money on getting into the Champions League.  But he got stung. Since then he's been struggling to stay in the game.

We'll see what he's made of in January.

Let's hope it's sterner stuff than the General.

[SamTheMouse]

A football club needs someone decisive with clarity of vision at the helm.

Lerner is a ditherer, and that's why we're up shit creek.

[pbavfckuwait]

January may give a insight as to the way Lerner will go, but the issue there could be, that regardless of what he may want to spend it will come down to, what is available, who wants to come and more crucially in what positions, this to be balanced out against rate of wages, length of contract, clauses and whatever in case we do go down regardless.
I think he may play it, that we go down as much as we can the loan route, so no long term commitment apart from maybe in a forward , but we are probably looking at someone coming in and needing to get 10 to 15 goals between then and May.
This Brian Green is what worries me about your statement of using the tools available, I just do not think those tools in the long run, not just this season are good enough.
I also can foresee, if this is possible an even furthering of Lerner's lack of interest in AVFC, but still a need to recoup as much as possible of his dough back from selling the club.What a shitty state we have reached.