I would imagine all season ticket holders received the following leaflet today from Randy Lerner and CEO Paul Faulkner.

This is a fine gesture, no one asked for it and I certainly appreciate the effort to put such a simple thing together and well done to all.

And in return, THANK YOU to Randy Lerner for the time, effort and money put into Aston Villa FC and thank you for restoring the pride of the club.

Onwards and Upwards.

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.

You may have read this piece before from the Daily Mail that Neil Moxley wrote but well worth repeating this for those of you who may have missed it

Says everything why I love Randy Lerner as our owner and why I personally trust him 100%, there are things I could add

Free scarves, Euro Champs return, Holte Pub, general refurbishment at high level, free away trips etc. etc.

But this explains it much better than I

The headlines don’t really do Randy Lerner justice. That’s sometimes the problem with this job. Journalists are trained (difficult to believe, I know) to cherry-pick the juiciest tit-bits and spin them into reports of interest.

So the story that needed reporting, given the general air of mis-trust and confusion that has reigned at Villa Park for the past couple of months, was Martin O’Neill.

Randy says that Martin stays. Good. (For the record, I think – but have no confimation – that the manager’s future might have been sorted out on the Thursday prior to the Blackburn game. And that it was Mr Lerner holding the ace cards, not Mr O’Neill

But the point about Lerner’s annual press conference was not just the important message that needed to be conveyed, but the manner of it. The American took on all-comers for 50 minutes. The friendly, inquisitive and intrusive questions about his leadership.

Fortunately, through the medium of an internet column, we can try to enlighten people as to what the man is all about. First, he is utterly, utterly devoted to Aston Villa.

Unlike Hicks and Gillett at Liverpool, or the Glazer family at Manchester United, there is no disguising his intentions. It is not to use Aston Villa as a giant cash-cow, to be milked whenever he fancies it. His investment stands at £180m and is growing.

He has bought a former farm close to Bodymoor Heath and is fully immersed in the area. Oh, and he has the club crest tattooed on his ankle. Clearly, this is a man prepared to make Aston Villa his life.

But that’s not what I like about him. True, he’s very personable, polite and very, very protective of his family. But what I admired was the following – and I’m just going to re-produce a few words from his press conference that weren’t newsworthy, because I think this gives the best flavour of the man.

‘When I walk around Bodymoor Heath in the middle of the afternoon in the pouring rain and see Gordon Cowans out there with all that he stands for, and all that he has accomplished, with his hood over his head, talking to Gary Gardner or Ciaran Clark, it’s a hidden moment.

‘It’s hidden moments like these that I think are worth mentioning because they are part of the experience that I’m having. It’s one of the signs of growth and development of the club that I value. It will become more visible over time.

‘It’s growing, that experience. Winning at Old Trafford was a big deal. Going to the Carling Cup final was beyond great, going to Wembley with my kids, driving up and seeing tens of thousands of Villa fans in their colours. I’d never been there before. It was all pretty impactful for me.’
A former colleague of mine warned me when I entered the business of football reporting that 95 per cent of those involved in football club ownership are either cheats, crooks, blaggards or conmen. That there were very few involved for the same emotional reasons as the average fan.

I think Randy Lerner makes up some of that five per cent.

‘I remain very excited and privileged to be involved,’ he said towards the end of his interview.

Aston Villa fans, you are lucky people. This man is one of you. He should be cherished.