Randy completes sale of the Browns for mega, mega money
This story broke in the last week, and all the indications were that it would be a quick sale. As mentioned last week, I love my American football, and one of the people I follow on Twitter has just released the following news:
‘Sale of Browns is now official and complete. Randy Lerner sold them to Jimmy Haslam for in excess of $1 billion.’
The man who tweeted it is Adam Schefter, a reporter for ESPN who knows his stuff, so you can mark this as done. The fee we heard last week was around $920 million, but the final figure seems to be more than that. We’ve heard Faulkner come out and say that Villa aren’t for sale, and that it won’t affect us either way.
A number of reports in America have cited that he prefers Villa, as he sees us as ‘his’ team, where the Browns were his dads. Even if money isn’t invested, and reports are that Lerner wants us to turn an operating profit anyway, this can only be a good thing for us. He is a good chairman when looking at a number of others, and hopefully we’ll see him more involved.
A billion dollars is a ridiculous amount of money, so well done Mr Lerner, and it just goes to show how valuable the NFL is. It will be really interesting I think to see what happens now. Things are definitely on the up, we have a chairman with just the one team under his control and the fans are back on board.
We certainly need a few new players, and I expect a bit of movement before the transfer window closes. We’ve gone for the more ‘value for money’ approach which I love, although a ‘statement of intent’ signing would also be great! Sure Lambert has his targets, so let’s see who’s the next new signing to move to Villa Park.
Update: Schefter has also just tweeted the following:
‘Jimmy Haslam will pay about $700 million in first part of Browns’ purchase from Randy Lerner, then over $300 million in second part.’
UTV.
Aston Villa News 24/7
I wish I had that kind of money.
Anyway, yeah, good news, not expecting a massive investment in Villa but hell, 5% of the first payment would be just over £22m, which I am sure would swell the coffers.
For the record at no point have I believed that we HAVE to spend the way we are, I believe it is a choice and frankly, if Lambert really wanted a ‘special’ signing, I honestly believe Lerner would fund it.
Wouldn’t be bad would it mate?!
I agree with you there. We saw with the Bent transfer, that if needs must, he’ll put his money in his pocket. I like what Lambert is doing, and a big signing would just top things off.
it can only be good news for villa.as it says above villa is lerners baby so he will want the club to succeed.its all about status in the billionares club and where the lerners failed with the browns randy can succeed with villa.if he only gave us the interest of his money every year we could make great signings.COME ON THE VILLA.