Matt Slater on his blog on the BBC has written this excellent piece about meeting Randy last week.

BBC LINK

This is not the first article of this kind but is the best I have seen from a neutral commenting on many of the themes I have expressed on this blog since it started.

It is too long an article to reproduce here but some snippets

On MON

Perhaps Lerner was thinking the same because it was the first subject he addressed last week: forget the rumours, O’Neill is staying put. The significance of this cannot be underestimated for a number of different reasons.

First, the O’Neill question has come to symbolise something bigger than a staffing issue. The Ulsterman’s ambition is of the burning variety and his public statements (and coded messages) about what Villa must do to break into the top four have become a de facto line in the sand: how much do you really want Champions League football, boss?

Second, if a football brain of O’Neill’s quality, backed by four years of almost unstinting Lerner generosity, cannot do better than sixth place, who will and where is he working now? Losing the former Celtic manager would threaten Villa’s progress at a time when the top-four target has never moved so quickly.

Martin O’NeillO’Neill became Villa boss in August 2006. Photo: Getty Images

Third, if O’Neill believes he cannot achieve his goals under Lerner, what will that say to the talented team he has assembled? What would James Milner think?

And finally, Lerner knows how important it is to get the key personnel decisions right in England because he has got so many of them wrong in Cleveland. This is not the place (and I’m not the journalist) to list the reasons why the Browns have struggled on Lerner’s watch but a failure to find an O’Neill figure is one of them. Until perhaps now, that is.

On the money situation

Lerner is not George Gillett, Tom Hicks, any of the Glazers or even Kraft’s Irene Rosenfeld. At a time when American owners of British businesses are about as popular as Icelandic volcanoes, Lerner is a shining exception. There are no Norwich City scarves at Villa Park.

This does not mean they are without debt – don’t be ridiculous, this is the Premier League we’re talking about so Villa are officially £72m in the red – but that debt is to Lerner and, with an inherited fortune of $1.5bn, he does not need to call it in any time soon.

Lerner actually made it clear last week that he does not view the sums Villa “owe” him as debts at all. Since 2006, he has pumped £179m into the club in a fairly even split between loans and equity. But to him it is all just equity or “capital investment”.

I have said Lerner is the McGregor of the new age

Among the many things Lerner is given credit for by Villa fans, one of the less well-known is his backing for an Aston Villa Supporters Trust initiative to erect a statue of William McGregor, the club director who helped start the Football League, at Villa Park last year.

McGregor, who died in 1911 after a 34-year connection with Villa, once said “football is big business” but I would argue that many of football’s recent problems have been because it has not been business-like enough.

Aston Villa, however, might just have found the perfect owner for these straitened times: a rich fan who thinks like a big businessman. McGregor would have loved him.