The Owner and his CEO...

Looking at what Randy has done since he too over.
Paid £64 Million for a virtually debt free club that was languishing in the lower reaches of the league, forcing people to sell shares they had in a club they love.
Pumped upwards of £250 Million? into it, running up massive debts to errrrmmmm himself.
Taking all the glory for not making himself pay back the debt he owes to himself from himself, but by all accounts we are still massively in debt to himself.
Spend 7 years doing all that to find us languishing in the lower reaches of the league.
So to sum up we are almost where we were but now massively in debt to the man who own the club.
I am not saying there is anything dodgy going on just that we have been very badly mismanaged from a financial and footballing point of view.

And that's why you have to scratch your head and ask if it was mismanagement or if £250 Million was cleaned for a 50% return (spent that much, recouped half).

Then, as you say, the "debt" gets written off.

Again, a billionaire who has just spunked a shitload of money for absolutely no return on his original outlay and who seems to have stepped off the bus since the big spending finished.

If you sum up Villa in just one paragraph, it's a real "WTF?" moment.

The Holte Hotel looks nice though.

You can't argue that a lot of the things done have been good. But where it matters it has been a joke.

Lack of footballing knowledge is the big problem - villa is not a toy.

The last four seasons have been shockers. We should be taking our wake-up call and taking steps to avoid what usually happens clubs that don't.

Trotters wrote:And that's why you have to scratch your head and ask if it was mismanagement or if £250 Million was cleaned for a 50% return (spent that much, recouped half).

Then, as you say, the "debt" gets written off.

Again, a billionaire who has just spunked a shitload of money for absolutely no return on his original outlay and who seems to have stepped off the bus since the big spending finished.

Pretty much all football club owners spend more money than the get back though. The only way to make a small fortune out of a football club is to start with a large one.

Oh I don't know about that. Uncle Doug did ok out the place.

When you're speeding upwards of 80% of your income on player wages then you're asking for trouble - that's just idiocy. But add in the massive tv income, sponsorship, etc, as well as player sales, I reckon it's do-able to make money.

Look at Everton and Arsenal on that list.

The two exceptions to the rule and Doug worked in a different age. Nowadays you need to have a nine figure bank balance and a desire to piss most of it away to be a Premier League owner.

Whilst most owners do lose money, not many lose as much as our loser...

Okay, I admit we might be an extreme example.

But even you have to admit that it is quite a leap from that to what you are suggesting.

When it was first suggested that Carson Yeung was shifty, not many believed it. They said it was quite a leap from him being an incompetent clown to what was being suggested. Fast forward a few years and the depth of murkiness surrounding Yeung has still yet to be determined.

If you want to launder money, you do it through a front that is established, reputable, seemingly open.

What's in it for Randy though, you might ask?
Maybe him getting an over-the-odds price for his NFL team was part of it. What he's lost at Villa, he certainly made up for there.

Just to sum up my theorem:

Previous owner approached by various consortiums including the people who eventually bought Liverpool.
Previous owner declines all offers
Previous owner finds an NFL helmet on his desk and looks into the gift giver.
Previous owner is told that this  is the man he must sell to.
Randy buys the club
Randy announces big plans
Randy gets a tattoo to prove his dedication
Randy hires some experienced heavy hitters.
Randy hires a mouthpiece.
Heavy hitters suddenly leave without any real explanation.  
Mouthpiece suddenly leaves.
Lots of money spent on things like expensive renovations.
Lots of money given to a manager who paid way WAY over the odds for everything.
Manager suddenly leaves just a few days before the start of a season.
The epic flow of money into the club (2nd only to Man City) comes to a sudden, grinding halt.
An up and coming manager is approached. His chairman tells him he must not go to Villa under any circumstances under the guise of "you're too good for Villa".
Said manager goes to Everton...a club almost identical in every way.
Randy, the tattooed, dedicated Anglophile is nowhere to be seen near anything Anglo.
Randy sells family heritage for a sum that surprises everyone.
Randy writes off the massive debt owed to himself.

All of these are fact and not in dispute.

So why the massive outpouring of money into substandard players on ridiculously huge wages?
Was it just bad luck that we didn't make the top 4 and champions league under MoN? Or were the finishing places of 6th, 6th and, er, 6th just a coincidence? A glass ceiling?
Why the sudden and almost dead-stop of money coming into the club? Why not a gradual tapering off?
Why the public outing of dead wood under the name "bomb squad" when all this will do is devalue the money invested?

Quarter of a billion dollars in, half of that back out.

Again, look at the situation at Blues....money in, lots of silly spending (the ground "improvements", overpaid players, player purchases) then suddenly....money stops, players sold and a money laundering charge.

No one else has managed a proper explanation as to why MoN was allowed to get away with spending so much cash except "naive, stupid billionaire". No one has managed to come up with a reason as to why the previously hired experienced people suddenly walked. No has managed to explain properly why MoN left (especially in light of his successful law suit against the club). No one has been able to explain why all the funding suddenly stopped and expensive players gotten rid of (Milner, Young, Downing) rather than simply stopping silly purchases on ridiculous wages and slowly progressing to a situation where the books are more closely balanced.

My theorem does. It's just distasteful is all.

Did Blues really spend that much money when Yeung was purportedly laundering the cash?

Apart from paying over 80 million quid for them, you mean?
I dunno...the books aren't clear.

In retrospect the money Yeung paid for the club does seem somewhat suspicious...

That's the key word, "retrospect". It's all so obvious now.

I'm simply offering an alternate that might, in retrospect, also seem obvious.

Interesting stat this for those who say we don't spend under lerner -

http://twitter.com/henryfraser0/status/448578190169346048/photo/1

I don't think the spending is in doubt. Its how badly it has been spent.

Also that chart shows wages wise we are still paying more than a lot of other clubs , some of whom are above us .

Suggests to me that we are under performing under mr lambert.

What period is that over?

Spurs wage bill is the lowest compared to their transfer fees.
Does that mean they pay less than other clubs in wages or that they pay over the odds in transfer fees for players? Given Daniel Levy's reputation, I highly doubt they pay too much over the odds for players so fair play if they've kept the relative wage bill down.

I think the bars are indicative of not only talent but depth of talent. Man City could put out a reserve team that'd likely come close to winning the league whereas Villa's reserves wouldn't win a weekend pub comp.

Brilliant starting eleven and excellent squad as opposed to mediocre starting eleven and a non-existent squad.

I don't know , but it's this seasons clubs ,just saw the chart on twitter .

Our last published accounts were covering last season.

How our wagebill ended up where it was is a cause of great wonder, especially as it is not fully under control even after a few season's of financial retrenchment.

You're starting to come around to my way of thinking, huh?

They've just had Pat Murphy on R5L. He says that whilst Lambert and Faulkner are getting stick, fans should train their guns on Lerner as it is him that has the most say in what is going to happen.

I'm no fan of Murphy, but he does have a bloody good point...