As Lerner prepares to sell, Villa told not to expect cash windfall

Or so the Mirror would have you believe. News today has been dominated by the potential Lerner sale of the Browns, and the confirmation that we’re well on our way to signing Ron Vlaar.

Many were speculating what it might mean for the Villa, but according to James Nursey of the Mirror, it won’t mean a massive cash injection for us. Here are a few pieces from the Mirror piece:

“Villa’s US chairman Lerner has tightened the purse-strings in recent years after running up an £80million wage bill at the Premier League club.

Lerner, who took control of the Browns in October 2002 after his father Al died, is also now selling a 70 per cent stake in his NFL outfit.

But MirrorSport understands he still expects Villa to try to turn an operating profit.

He stands to make at least £600m from selling a controlling stake in the Browns to Tennessee businessman Jimmy Haslam.

“The businessman has still told Villa boss Paul Lambert to continue to budget prudently and not go wild in the transfer market.”

More money would be nice, of course it would, but I will be happy enough if we continue as we have so far this summer. Shrewd looking purchases which represent value for money and add to our squad has to be considered a good thing. We’ve had money, and as a person I follow on Twitter pointed out earlier, buying Lowton, Vlaar, El Ahmadi and Holman more or less equals one Curtis Davies.

I’d still love some more money spent on Villa naturally, but I understand Lerner wanting us to turn a profit again, especially after the O’Neill madness. There are then these UEFA fair play rules which I won’t pretend to understand but could also have an influence.

At the end of the day if he does indeed sell the Browns, I only think this can benifit us, regardless of money invested. Still if you wouldn’t mind giving Lambert a couple of hundred million I wouldn’t object to that either! The reports I’ve read seem to suggest that Randy sees Villa as ‘his’ team, where the Browns were more important to his late father. He’s not looking to sell us from what I’ve read, so as mentioned I think the more involved Lerner is with us, the better.

The same report also links James Collins with both West Ham and Sunderland, and this is not surprising at all. I don’t believe all the ‘one in, one out’ transfer policy that some seem to, but with Vlaar’s imminent arrival (hopefully), we’ll have a surplus of centre-backs, and it makes sense for one to leave.

UTV.