Panto_Villan

That would make you a Sky TV child, a product of the modern day. To be fair, the alternative view is a kind of football feudalism where there is never any chance of the big teams losing their status as a "big club" no matter how badly they play, nor the other teams rising up to be "big" clubs themselves despite how well they play. History obviously plays a role in how big a club is but it can't be everything - Britain isn't a bigger country than America because we used to hold more territory and have more influence.

My top three would be Natalie Portman, Emma Watson and Sienna Miller.

At first glance I did not read the bolded word correctly!

You're contradicting yourself. Either the club is going to make money this year and therefore it is already making money, or the club is going to lose money this year and therefore it is already losing money. Which is it?

My logic works fine. You seem to have overlooked the fact that the financial results of a business do not magically appear at the end of the year, but accumulate during the year. The TV money is already being received and the wage bill has already been slashed. If you think the club is going to make a profit this year, then it already IS making a profit. Lerner will have access to the financial results for the year so far and could provide them to any potential new owner. The loans do not need to be paid down in order for the club to increase in value in any useful sense. Randy's debt will go with him when he sells the club, because no owner is going to leave the previous owner with money secured against the assets of the club they just bought and Randy isn't stupid enough to leave that much of his money in a club now controlled by someone else. Unless something really bizarre happens, when the club is sold Lerner will have 0% equity and the club will owe him no money at all. Thus if somebody is going to pay £100m to buy the club, it doesn't matter to Randy how that £100m is divided between purchasing the club and paying off his loans. It'd be the same if it was £500m. All the money would end up in Randy's holding company however the money is divided between loans and purchase, and irrespective of whether he's made a profit or loss on the sale. The plan when selling a company is to minimise EXTERNAL debt; the rest is deal with in the purchase price from the new owner.

BJ - so yes, he's not improved us from the position that we were in when he took over except for that part where he massively did and we nearly qualified for the Champions League. The money he wasted was his own. That debt is money he'll either lose when he sells the club (if he sells for a loss), or it will reduce the profit he'll make when he sells the club (if he sells for a profit). No owner is going to agree to buy the club with Randy's loans still attached. If Trent is right about him stringing the club along to slowly pay down the debt then it becomes more a problem, but I just can't see that happening as it's an incredibly high-risk strategy for Lerner due to the annual risk of relegation and losing basically everything. If he's getting the club ready to sell then it makes sense to sell sooner rather than later.

Trent - Yup, you're right about the £17.7m loss though, I was indeed using figures a year out of date. Given that the television revenues are ~£20m extra a year now, that would put the club in a small profit. That said, I did mention the TV deal and the reducing wage bill in exactly the quote where you suggested I did not. However, you're missing the point of my post by debating the details. The crux of the discussion isn't the likelihood of Lerner selling the club for a profit, as I said in my third sentence that I'd just read Fulham may well have gone for £200m and thus it was possible Lerner could have recouped his investment even if the club was in the loss-making state I thought it would be in The point is that running the club to make a small profit each year and using that to pay down the loans isn't a sensible strategy from his point of view. All it needs is one bad season and for the club to get relegated, and the value of AVFC is hugely reduced - and the likelihood of relegation is increased if you're running the club on a shoestring. It's better to sell it immediately, while it is still a PL club and is enjoying a rare moment of stability. The logic works irrespective of whether the club is making a loss or not, because the value of the club increases with the money it is making. So if the club is doing well and could pay down the debt quickly, it'd sell for a lot of money. If it's not making much cash, you won't get much money for selling the club but equally you're not making much progress in paying down the debt - so why bother keeping the club? In either situation it's a case of money now vs possible money in the future, and really he'd be mad to risk the catastrophic financial loss he'd end up with if the club got relegated. Also, whenever Randy sells the club, if he's not been able to get his money out then he will lose that money. But if he sells the club for a profit, then that £125m of debt is money he would have made as profit had he not racked the debt up. Either way, he's the one footing the bill. It's highly unlikely to be left behind when he leaves the club, imo.

@BJ - glad you made the second post there! To answer your first post, here's a quick summary: Our league positions before Lerner took over were 8th, 16th, 6th, 10th, 16th, 11th. After he took over it was 6th, 6th, 6th, 9th, 16th, 15th. Not much difference, and looks like a couple of relegation battles before he took over too. The figures I posted a couple of days ago show our revenue position relative to the rest of the PL clubs has at best stayed the same since Lerner took over, and likely improved at least one place. All the debt is to Lerner. As I said in my previous post, he's already put that money in and if he can't get it out again then he's the one that takes the loss. The lack of investment at the time he took over was sufficiently bad that Bodymoor couldn't be redeveloped and had repeatedly been pushed back. Maybe he got the club cheap-ish, but the price the owner pays isn't really relevant as it doesn't actually affect AVFC in any way (just the current and previous owners). So I think it's a bit harsh to say Lerner was worse than what we had before, even if he didn't get us to the promised land. @dodgyknees - fair play, sir.

I can't help myself. I'm still reading. So at present the club has about £125m in debt, all owed to Lerner. I'm fairly sure it's interest-free as he has waived the interest he is due on it. The club was losing about £50m a year last time I checked, and he bought the club for £65m. Honestly, I'd be very surprised if he doesn't lose money when he sells the club - he'd need to sell for £200m+ just to get his money back. Villa isn't worth that much money. I'm pretty sure you could find other clubs in a similar position to us more cheaply, which suggests he might just have to lower the price and take the loss on the chin if he wants to sell. The longer he holds the club, the more money he'll lose. Actually, that said, apparently Fulham went for £150m-£200m so maybe he'll be able to cash out fine given we've got a good stadium and a good fanbase? Who knows. The point is that ultimately it'll be Lerner that carries the can for his financial recklessness if he sells, not the club. So he gave us a free tilt at the CL and he walks away with the loss when it doesn't work out. I think he's been a better owner than people give him credit for. @Trent - it's possible he could run the club on the cheap for a while and pay back the loans. However, if he did that over 5 years it'd require the club making a profit of £25m each year. That's a £75m swing from the current financial position, and while I think we won't be making such a huge loss each year now we've trimmed the wage bill and aren't paying ridiculous sums in compensation to managers and are getting TV money, I still can't see the club being profitable yet...let alone taking out £25m a year. So I don't think that's possible. Also, even if he did somehow manage that swing in profit, it would also involve not making any net transfer spend (even with tightened pursestrings we're still spending over £10m each year) and thus we'd be even more vulnerable to relegation than usual. If the club got relegated, Randy would kiss goodbye to a huge amount of revenue and also the value of the club overall would decrease too. So it doesn't make sense for him to do that, even if it were possible - if he wants to sell, he should do so in the next year or two while the club is in a relatively stable position compared to usual as that's when he'll get the safest return on his money.

Though in regards to debt, Randy has screwed himself with that more than the club. The debt is money he has put into the club - any owner who buys it from him will want the debt cleared, so it just increases the selling price he'll have to ask for the club in order not to make a loss. But if he doesn't sell the club, it'll keep racking up more debt so it'll just get worse for him. If he decides to liquidate AVFC then he'll get none of the money back at all. So, really, Villa has Randy over a barrel regarding those loans as the club has the money and the problem of working out how he gets the cash back out is up to him (and it'll primarily involve finding someone rich enough to pay them off when they buy the club).

I'm going to bow out of this thread for a bit, I think, as it's just winding me up. Dodgyknees, please don't take too much offence at my post above because it was written in a moment of anger. However, I think you should reflect for a moment on the state the club was on when Randy bought it and the fact that we have enjoyed success under him as well as the bad times. You seem to have turned him into a cartoon villain in your head, and in reality human beings and the legacies they leave are not as one-dimensional or binary as you seem to think they are.

No, you're just making ludicrous statements to justify what appears to be utterly blind hatred. Various other posters here dislike Randy Lerner and that's fine, as it generally appears to come from different interpretations of the same facts everyone else sees. I get a bit frustrated with some people's insistence on being negative (BJ, Morpheus), but at least I can see where they are coming from even if I don't agree with them. There wouldn't be any point having a message board if everyone had identical opinions. Your posts seem to have no basis in reality whatsoever. I could post a long and detailed argument on why Lerner buying a club in a bad financial situation and investing money to deliver 6th place three years in a row, followed by several bad seasons and questionable managerial appointments is significantly better than taking over a club, firing the existing manager mid-season and then going through a total of four managers in a year that nearly causes back-to-back relegations for a club that was on relatively stable footing before the new owners arrive...but you wouldn't be interested in things like facts, would you? The fact you're even comparing Lerner to Venky's suggests you've completely lost the plot. I said earlier in this thread that Lerner is a mediocre owner, but I feel compelled to defend him because some of the criticism leveled at him is just so completely insane. At present you are serving as exhibit A. I seriously cannot believe you equate his tenure to that of Venkys. I'd be very surprised if even his other regular critics on this board would do the same, because it's so utterly outlandish. FYI - All of the club's debt is in the form of either interest-free or low-interest loans from Lerner's other companies. It isn't suffocating the club in any way. Bank loans would suffocate the club because they charge interest at commercial rates, but Lerner wisely never took them out. But I guess that's just another fact for you to conveniently overlook?

If you genuinely believe that Lerner is as bad as Venky's then you either need to do more reading on what they did to Blackburn Rovers, or you need your head examined. I'll assume it's the former, but your argument is so laughable I can honestly barely believe you're actually trying to justify it...I assumed it was hyperbole you were using for effect, so I thought I'd call you out on it. You really believe it though?

Lerner hardly counts as a "bad owner" if we're talking about the history of the Premier League as a whole. If you're mentioning him in the same breath as Venkys then you really need to get some perspective on how bad owners can actually be.

I still think we'll be top half. There are a lot of teams worse than us this year - I think we'll end up 14th+ simply by not utterly imploding which means if we string together a good run at some point during the season then top half should be very achievable.

Big John - as you're continually claiming we've slipped down the revenue league comparative to other clubs around us, please can you provide the league's financial data for the 2005/2006 season when Randy took over? I'd be interested to verify your claims. The Deloitte money leagues only show the top 20 international clubs for that period but have extended to top 40 in more recent times. Let's have a look at the information I have available, though. At the moment, the teams above us in revenue according to the Deloitte Money League for 2011/2012 are: 1. Manchester United 2. Chelsea 3. Arsenal 4. Manchester City 5. Liverpool 6. Tottenham Hotspur 7. Newcastle United 8. Everton 9. Aston Villa In 2005-2006, just before Randy took over, the top English teams in the money league. This is only a top-20 list, so it's impossible to know who is in position 9. 1. Manchester United 2. Chelsea 3. Arsenal 4. Liverpool 5. Newcastle United 6. Tottenham Hotspur 7. Manchester City 8. West Ham 9. ???????? In the best case scenario for your argument, we're in exactly the same spot - 9th - as when Randy took over. However in the previous year it was actually Everton who took the 8th spot instead of West Ham, so presumably they're actually in 9th and we were 10th or below. So he's hardly done a terrible job financially relative to our rivals. Please either provide concrete evidence to the contrary or stop peddling lies about us falling behind our rivals under Lerner.

Morpheus - the Dortmund model won't work if you assume that the owner won't give the club all the money from selling their best player, but it's hardly surprising you'll have a bad opinion of someone if you assume the worst of them all the time. Essentially you're criticising the management for doing something they've not yet done and may very well not do. You're probably right that Benteke is a cut above what we'll usually find, but Tottenham have shown a good example of how you can build a squad with the money from a single player. It's also not really fair to say Benteke doesn't count as a success because it'd be hard to repeat the feat - the fact is, we bought Benteke and he's awesome. Maybe it was luck or maybe it was good judgement, but it's impossible to know and either way it has worked out for us.

I saw on Sky after the Arsenal match that he's either third or fourth in the entire league for most successful tackles this season, on 19. Nice to see!

I think Gabby might have something to say on Hodgson ignoring performance after performance! Tbh I think I'd actually prefer to wait a bit before Delph gets called up, don't want him getting crocked or getting ideas about going to another club.

I've just realised why I hate reading this thread: it's the opposite of the Bannan thread. You guys are doing a reverse-Con on me. Just like reading his thread gave me a completely overblown dislike of Barry Bannan due to the endless praise Con would give him, reading this thread makes me like Lerner far more than I would otherwise. For the record, my opinion of Lerner has always been that he's a middling owner who is not an ideal manager for two reasons - one, he doesn't know enough about football, and two, because he's not so insanely rich he just doesn't have to care about money at all. The latter isn't something you can criticise an individual for and he seems to be slowly improving the former. However, the level of criticism that is aimed at him by some posters on this board is so ludicrous that I find myself becoming taking an increasingly strong opposing view when Lerner really doesn't deserve that either. He's fine, but no more than that. I hate the way this endless debate is warping my perception of him because there's no middle ground. I don't see that any of this has changed over the past six weeks, except we can add that now the team is doing OK.

My only criticism is that I feel he could move his half-time team talk to the start of the game. Then that Title Chase thread wouldn't be a joke!

Honestly, I'm happy with Randy at the moment - I like the manager and the team is 2 points from the top 4 at this stage of the season after a really hard start. @dodgyknees - if you really, really want Randy gone, which you obviously do, why don't you go and find an owner who'd be willing to throw hundreds of millions of pounds at the club every year like you want? It should be easy to find an idiot with billions of pounds to spare, right? Until there's a possible replacement willing to put in the level of spending you want I really don't understand how you can be so relentlessly critical of someone for "only" losing £50m a year to fund your club. And while Randy has done other things wrong, your signature suggests your primary complaint is minimal spending. Randy Lerner is much like getting old: better than the obvious alternative. Until you prove that having eternal youth is a possible option, I for one will find your endless complaining about not having it rather tedious. Particularly when you're still banging that drum when the team is doing well, which ultimately should be what you really care about?

I had to switch off at half time because I'm visiting the family and my dad wanted to watch the rugby.

Meh. We don't have our two best attacking players and we're playing the best team in the league. Can't say the scoreline is a massive shock, let's just hope they don't beat us by more than 2 or 3.

We're looking reasonably solid in defence but not solid enough to hold out 90 minutes. Sadly, we're looking utterly toothless going forwards. We're so utterly unable to get near their penalty box we may as well get Tonev on and hope the law of averages works in our favour...