Villa - What's The Story?

im just wondering whe he (randy) hasnt tabled a bid yet. He obviously isnt waiting to raise the funds, so it tells me he has either not made his mind up or is trying to come to an agreed price with Ellis. A week is a long time in football so I will only believe it when it happens.

I hope your right and I hope Lerner hurrys the chuff up.

No, just and official intention to put in a bid....a bit pointless really.

i belive its got to happen because ellis knows if it doesnt theere will be a backlash from the fans even with MON in charge

Thats the point - Randy has to put a bid in and at the mo there is no real indication that he will. If there is show me but all we have so far is pure speculation and Ellis saying talks are on going about the possibility of talks and a bid.

If Lerner still wants to buy and Ellis will not sell for less than £64 mill. Lerner will need to invest a total of £180 mill to buy the shares, underwrite losses (£25 mill) and increase the "Player Spend" budget by another £90mill. over the next 3 years; for M.O'N. to compete on a level playing-field with the other Top Clubs, in order to attract the best players. Anything less than that is not likely to get us back into the Top4 and no European Fotball. Does anyone think that Lerner or anyone else is that keen?

All this talk of how much money Lerner will need to invest is bo***x due to the following points:1) he does not need to buy the entire share issue to controll the club, just the Ellis adn Petchy shares (about 60%) which will cost him about £38,5 million. 2) In big business you don't always pay your debts, you just keep paying the bank the intrest fees - much cheaper unless you are looking at a 30-50year time period (few do as most investors at this level will be dead during that period) 3) We don't know what O'Neill wants to do with the squad, my personal feeling is that he can use the squad we have a a good foundation to build on and invest over a period of several years as opposed to 1-2 serasons - as steve64k says, who wants to do a Chelski, I don't. 4)On the point of money again, not all good players cost an absolute fortune - everone tells me that Olly is world class (or at least was before O'Leary ruined him) and the same goes for Baros, combined fee (approx)£11 million. Few teams buy more than 2-3 high profile players in a season. Even Chelski (who probably overpay for most of their players as other chairmen hold them to ransom) don't pay huge money for all their players. 5)We don't knnow what, if anything, is coming through the youth system. 6)We don't know either O'Neill's or Lerner's agender concerning timescale. 7)We have yet to see what the O'Neill effect will do with our current players 8)Who knows if we will produce a Rooney to sell on. Yes he's a great player but I think I'd rather have 2 world class players (which is absolutely possible) for the money generated by his sale, than to keep Rooney. Sermon is over.........for now. :o)

Hi Steve (again) I agree. Unfortunately "V-of-North" can't see the wood for the trees. What I said in effect was that Lerner will stand back and look at the worst case scenario. He has to be prepared to invest the maximum required in order not to lose all of his investment. The worst case scenario for him is £180mill. Perhaps M.O'N can perform a miracle and get Top4 positions spending just an extra £10mill every season, but this means Lerner having to invest £120 mill at the very least. He may decide just to buy sufficient to give him 51% control but this would be most unlikely - he would almost certainly want 100% to make Villa a subsidiary company and use the considerabe tax losses to set against his profits taxes. So there you have it - we'll just have to wait to see what Randy decides to do. But I can assure you it will be in Lerner's best interests and no the Villas!