Lerner - Yes / No / Unsure

[pacbuddies]

I believe Lerner does actually learn from his mistakes and, at the very least, he has finished the training grounds and has a proper management structure in place.

How can you say that when immediately after the appalling Houllier left, we had an absolute farcical search for a new boss which ended with us appointing just about the worst choice for a manager there was, and one that we had to stump up compensation for!

As for proper management structure, he doesn't have that, either in the boardroom or on the pitch. We're a shambles from top to bottom.

Because I believe the Houllier signing was a good one. At least you could see that he was trying to play proper football.

So out of 3 managers, he did alright with 2. He made a mistake with this one.

As for the management structure - it's better than what we used to have under our former owner.

He has only appointed 2!

[Risso]

I believe Lerner does actually learn from his mistakes and, at the very least, he has finished the training grounds and has a proper management structure in place.

How can you say that when immediately after the appalling Houllier left, we had an absolute farcical search for a new boss which ended with us appointing just about the worst choice for a manager there was, and one that we had to stump up compensation for!

As for proper management structure, he doesn't have that, either in the boardroom or on the pitch. We're a shambles from top to bottom.

Because I believe the Houllier signing was a good one. At least you could see that he was trying to play proper football.

So out of 3 managers, he did alright with 2. He made a mistake with this one.

As for the management structure - it's better than what we used to have under our former owner.

Is it buggery. Paul Faulkner was a glorified customer services manager at MBNA, now he's running Villa and is quite clearly way out of his depth. Oh and O'Neill was Doug's idea, not Lerner's. So so far he's appointed Houllier who had been in virtual retirement for years, and McLeish who relegated Birmingham twice. Lerner hasn't got a clue.

[holtelower]

Voted unsure but i am more negative and positive.

In one way, I dont blame him for trimming the wage bill, I am not daft enough to know we cannot spend money we havent got.

However, its his fault as the owner (and more importantly, the employer of Paul Faulkner) that they spiralled out of control in the first place.

re: MON - I think the blame was 50/50.

Houllier - yep, wasnt great ,but I could see what he was doing, I think the idea was right and in 2 yrs time, we'd have been in a better position than when MON was here. People forget that it was Houllier who told Gabby that his strength was his pace, not his muscle - and ordered him to slim back down.

The ideas were right.

Then he employs the total opposite - boring, negative manager, who buys expensive flops like Zigic, Ridgewell etc....

I honestly, think his heart is in the right place, but for some reason I cannot fathom, he seems to put all his trust in Paul Faulkner - and that is going to end up in relegation, whether its this year, or next.

In an ideal world, I'd like to see investment come into the club, but Randy keep the ownership. So thats why I am on the fence.

But RL on his own - only going one way.

[CI]

And he shortlisted McLaren and Martinez

Scary

[moggy]

I think Lerner has done alot in terms of sprucing up the Ground and getting Villa once again talked about. Sadly not for our football. However, I would be interested to see if this is what he is famed for? How the Cleveland Browns doing? I gather when he bought Villa many Browns fans warned all of us that he invests and if does not get results becomes disinterested and simply watches.

[Houlston]

We have had three good years under Lerner, an average one and now we seem to be having a bad one. It happens football clubs change and and football changes. He hasnt helped himself with a few things and especially with the choice of managers but Houllier did have backers. However does that mean then that every time the club hits a blip we should call for new owners? Because thats basically whats happening with Lerner now.

[John_Lerwill]

The one issue that prevents me from voting RL out is the issue as to just who or what would replace him.

Broadly, if he could implement a decent advisory team then his and our problems might be resolved.

[cheltenham_villa]

Id rather see him stay and keep a bloke like Mcleish than sell our club and inevitably our soul to the arab, chinese, whoever.

They'll bring millions, but they will sell us out.

The fans will be priced out, the stadium will be renamed and we'll sign the likes of adebayor and tevez. A change of owner might well be the end for me and villa.

I wouldn't be against this happening. I don't see the logic behind those people that say they wouldn't want a rich foreign owner. Why not buy success? Everyone else is doing it.

If we don't then we'll just get left behind, as we currently are anyway. What's the point in playing for nothing? Currently we are doing exactly this...

look at Man City being destroyed, some of the best players in the world, champions league football, future kings of England, amazing new youth campus being set up etc.....clearly ruining that club. :shock:

neither of you have addressed the issue of the fans being priced out. Have you looked at the ticketing policy of the big 4. Man City will follow. Im happy with trophies and the worlds greatest footballers, id just like to be there to enjoy it alongside my mates, not a bunch of japanese tourists who view it as an attraction.

[cheltenham_villa]

can someone tell me what faulkner has done?

Being part of the problem. Thinking we can appoint any manager and get results, thinking we can compete whilst selling off assets, setting unreasonable goals, putting pressure on the whole club, ignoring fans.

I can understand the manager point, though I believe he was part of a group that wanted him.

I dont think he is responsible for selling off assets, its a football club, all football clubs sell better players to better clubs. Thats how we were able to buy ours. The problem here is not reinvesting the money, I cant blame Faulkner unless i know whether that is his decision or one that was made for him.

Setting unreasonable goals.......Like what?

Ignoring fans, again this is football, i guess you refer to the Mcliesh appointment. Again I dont really see how this is just faulkers fault.

Im not defending the bloke, I just cant blame him for something without being aware of the whole picture. I presume a CEO is responsible for the non football aspects of running a club. Putting in place the objectives of the owner. If Randy wants a sustainable club that is run within it means and will promote from the youth academy then the CEO needs to implement that. I see him as just a bloke doing what he is told.

[VillaAndLoyal]

Most of what Lerner has done/is doing is for the benefit of the club. He is trimming the wage bill, because we can't afford it (see 'huge losses') and if Lerner were to 'sell up' as people seem to want him too, he could leave us right in the shit, with our new owner not being able to fund us as he'd promised (see numerous Portsmouth owners) and we tumble down the leagues after brushes with administration.

When he picked McLeish, he did it because he thought he had the right man for the job, granted, he was wrong, but he did it with the Villa in mind. He certainly didn't do it on the bloody cheap!

Selling the best players WAS business sense, the amounts offered were ludicrous, unfortunately this wasn't followed by footballing sense when replacements were needed...although he did sanction our bid for Bent, £24m, for the goalscorer we desperately needed! Sadly, selling our wingers left us with no service to said goal machine...which was poor decision making for AML and RL...

Granted, he's not throwing money at us, but we needed to find a balance, losing £45m+ a year was unsustainable (unless your first name is Sheikh)...look at Arsenal, they are run well as a business and are (almost) a good side too (although quite reliant on RVP)...we will find it a little harder because we are not a London club...

Also remember, the quality of the football is terrible right now, but Lerner has kept the ticket prices down (when compared to the rest of the league) and when we did get an increase, few can argue that this season's package was improved!

Everyone has an opinion, but I am happy with Randy as our 'sensible' owner, not so much in a footballing sense, but I'm hoping that will sort itself out. He has money when necessary, and is wealthy enough to keep us going. I don't want one of these middle eastern chaps (NOT a racial thing) to come in saying he has billions in the bank, only to find out he hardly has a pot to piss in! If you look at recent times, there's been far more 'wannabe' rich guys than actual rich guys taking ownership of clubs...

I'm sorry, you are entitled to your opinion, but in my opinion that whole post is a load of rubbish. Full of inaccuracies, assumptions and contradictions.

Firstly, you state most of what he has done/is doing is for the benefit of the club. How? What has he done? The only example you go on to offer, about him "trimming" the wage bill, is not even a plus point anyway. He is merely trying to correct an irresponsible three years of chucking money into anything and everything in a wholly unsustainable way. We laughably had a wage bill (80m+ a year) greater than that of Tottenham Hotspur, a team many are now backing to challenge for the title. A team full of quality and bargain purchases. Our team consisted of Steve Sidwell and Habib Beye (among others) on £40,000+ a week and not even playing.

This is why, when people say: "Oh, Lerner had a good first three years and it is only now going a bit pear-shaped" I say, "rubbish!"

It has been going "pear-shaped" from the moment he walked into this club, only now are we seeing the results. It is a mirror image to this country's financial problems. We spent irresponsibly for a period of time and now we are paying for it in the long-run. Who was responsible for this chronic mismanagement? Randolph Lerner.

Nothing he has done at this football club thus far suggests he is a sound businessman, absolutely nothing. Even selling our best players, whilst providing short-term cash investment, could be seen as foolish in the long-term because who knows where we could have finished with this additional quality? Most of the current England team is made up of former Villa players, after all. So the fact you state Randy is a "sensible" owner in a financial sense is quite utterly laughable, in my opinion, he is so far from sensible it isn't even funny.

The strange analogy you make about us ending up like Portsmouth FC is based on no evidence or facts whatsoever. Pure conjecture designed to scare people. We 'could' also end up like Man City or Spurs, by your very same logic.

The fact he didn't hire Alex McLeish on the cheap and paid our biggest rivals so much compensation for a manager no-one wanted is just an extension and further evidence of his reckless spending. Pumping dead money into completely illogical ideas. I think you have some sort of opinion that the reason people want him out is purely because he has reigned in his spending? If so, you are completely missing the point.

You say we have kept ticket prices low, then later in the same sentence talk about increased season-ticket prices this season, in doing so completely invalidating any sort of point you were trying to make. Ask Wolves or Albion fans whether we have kept ticket prices at the same price this season? We haven't. Our season tickets were bumped up and if that "better package" you are talking about is the free pie vouchers and free subscription to a channel many never watch anyway, then again I can only laugh.

Since he has been at this club, he has:

- Appointed non-footballing people to help run a football club. Paul Faulkner was previously 'Relationship Manager' at MBNA - how has working with credit cards for five years mean you have the skills to work as an effective chief executive officer at Aston Villa Football Club? He has no footballing background, clearly knows nothing about football (like Lerner) and was a completely illogical choice. To the people saying Faulkner is the problem and needs to go - who appointed him? Yes, that's right, good old Randy.

- Spent recklessly and unsustainably from the start, sanctioning crazy transfer and wage deals, as already mentioned further up. I don't need to go into any further detail on that.

- Appointed two thoroughly awful managers. Not the three some people are suggesting, as it was Doug Ellis who installed Martin O'Neill as manager under assurances that Villa would imminently have a new owner. The first manager he appointed was clearly not fit to return to work, following major heart troubles in recent years, yet we still offered him a medium/long-term contract regardless of the financial risks and ended up losing more money when the inevitable materialised. Another chronic mismanagement in terms of investment. This manager, Houllier, also turned us into a laughing stock on the pitch and largely started the feeling of apathy among many. His second appointment, Alex McLeish, was as nonsensical as it was foolhardy. There was not one footballing reason to appoint him on any level, in my mind. Again, this has been covered in great depth already and not many people fail to agree it was a massive mistake. A mistake we are still to see the true effects of.

- Headed a club partaking in endless PR gaffes. Given the level of discontent it is clear that what the club is doing now to communicate with its fans isn’t working anywhere near as well as it could be. The club needs a public face. While the manager is undoubtedly the face of the product on the pitch, the club needs somebody on the business side of things to be the mouthpiece of the board who can articulate their fading vision. Randy Lerner is clearly unwilling to assume that role, while Faulkner and Krulak are unable to. Krulak tried on this very site, and ended up attacking the national media when they merely reported things he said to the fans on this public internet forum. More evidence of a hierarchy at Villa just completely out of touch with the responsibilities and realities of running a Premier League football club? Many would say, yes.

No one doubts he hasn't done certain things well, like the training ground and Holte Pub refurbishment. But, in the grand scheme of things, these points are fairly insignificant. An owners two primary jobs will always be to deal with a club's finances and hire/appoint managers. He has not only failed, but abysmally failed on these two points on more than one occasion. If he had footballing people around him then I could hope these mistakes might be corrected, but he simply doesn't. He has failed on that, too.

It is very interesting reading what Citizen Blue, a Manchester City fan, said as a neutral earlier in this thread. He said:

NFL watcher for almost 20 years, watched the Browns since they've been owned by Lerner. Where were they 10 years ago when Lerner took over? Bottom. Last season? Bottom. This year? Bottom. They're one of the few teams to achieve almost nothing over an entire decade.

Lerner is a nice bloke but doesn't have a clue about running a sports franchise.

This sums it up for me. He might be a really nice bloke, but that matters not when running a football club in the 21st century.

[DeepDish]

Unsure.

My biggest concern is not that he has cut the spending. It is that he seems to not know what to do, and when he does things, it seems that he does the wrong things.

[CrackpotForeigner]

My biggest concern is not that he has cut the spending. It is that he seems to not know what to do, and when he does things, it seems that he does the wrong things.

Agree. Either he has to spend a lot - which is likely to bring success, or he has to spend wisely.

At the moment he is doing neither.

The kindest thing he can do is find someone with more money than he has to take the club off his hands and allow him to get out while he still has a shred of dignity intact.

[Robbie09]

For me he's drinking in the last chance saloon however I'd like to see Lerner stay. I think he's done more positive things than bad so I'll give him the benefit of doubt and point the finger at those who are advising him ie Faulkner.

I can't see anyone buying us in the near future so I think he's here for the short/medium term but I'd have a little more optimism if Faulkner and McLeish were handed their P45's.

[Richard]

Amazing only 28% are still definitely pro Lerner

[Mantis]

Amazing only 28% are still definitely pro Lerner

To be honest I think a lot of the votes in that poll depend on how he settles the McLeish question.

[choffer]

Still a Yes for me.

He put a fair whack of money into the club, backed MON with new signings in the hope that success on the pitch would unearth more support and therefore more income. When that didn't come, he had to re-assess the situation and decided that Villa had to live within its means (particularly with the financial fair play rules in the offing).

I'm not happy about our current position but I can see a plan. It's not necessarily a plan I like but I can see what he's trying to do in the long-term and I'm still on-board. I know I'll be in the minority here but I'm still still supporting Randy, even if some here will immediately accuse me of being blind.

You are blind. This isn't a "plan", it's emergency austerity measures similar to what the country as a whole is going through.

Sorry, just don't buy it. I know I'm going to be in the minority and I'm fine with that but imo, RL came into the club with big ambitions, spent fairly large on trying to achieve them and came pretty close. During that time, he also vastly improved the club, finishing the work at BMH, doing up the Holte, giving Acorns a better profile and communicating directly with the fans. Of course, it is easy to dismiss this all as just PR stunts but I genuinely don't buy this line (see his donations to millions to the arts for which he would gain no PR advantage).

During these early stages, RL was keen to investigate ways to improve revenue strands and increase the fan-base. Plans for the north stand, including increasing capacity were part of that. Ultimately though, several things have hampered those plans. First, ManCity changed the face of football (to how great an extent is of course, a matter for debate). Second, the global economic situation has vastly changed. Third, the impending financial fair play rules have changed the landscape for the future. Finally, I believe Rl has probably realised that the growth potential of the club is more limited than he might have originally thought.

All these factors to me have driven the change in tack and the resulting fiscal prudence. This prudence has included a policy of not having vastly overpaid players warming the bench and trying where possible to utilise the younger members of the squad (many of whom have possibly very promising futures). That is the plan, as I see it.

Now, I'm not saying that I think Houllier was a good appointment and I'm not saying that I was in favour of McLeish coming in either but I think it's far too simplistic to say that he has done nothing but cock up since he got here and that there is no plan (as some on here appear to be saying) is a little myopic. As John L said earlier in this thread, a new owner isn't necessarily the right answer, just ask Blackburn.

Everton and Newcastle have been very publicly on the market for an awful long time and no decent buyers have come forward. I can't see that we would be any much more successful in finding a new owner and I certainly would not want us to go down a soul-less route of buying success a la Man City.

I'm not saying I'm happy with the current situation but to view RL as an unmitigated disaster (as appears to be the common sentiment in this thread) is imo, an indefensible viewpoint.

(I appreciate that there's nothing new in what I've posted and I'm sure this site will continue to argue this subject for many months to come, I just wanted to state my opinion to provide a bit more balance )

[Stevo985]

Has his negatives, but unless a sugar daddy comes along willing to pump money in (which is unfortunately the way forward these days) I think he's still a good man to have at the helm

[Richard]

Sorry but for me the mere fact that Lerner is not Ellis is not good enough. I still get the impression that some people back him just because he came along and rid us of the dark lord

[markavfc40]

Lerner took us over after we'd just finished 16th. The way things are heading if we are lucky he will leave us having just finished in the same position. Oh and with a completed training ground, a renovated pub, some stained glass windows and on a personal level I have a free scarf and flag.

[TheDrums]

Plus he gets every penny back that he has put into the club + more.

Not such the golden owner, eh?