New Aston Villa owner Tony Xia targets Europe under Roberto Di Matteo for 'most famous club in China'21:29, 18 MAY 2016 UPDATED 21:31, 18 MAY 2016
BY JAMES NURSEY
Businessman plans to rebuild the Villans and make them huge in his homeland after buying out Randy Lerner following a relegation that's been coming for years
Aston Villa’s would-be new owner has vowed to put them back in the Premier League and end their long-suffering fans’ misery. Chinese businessman Dr Tony Jiantong Xia has struck a £60million deal with Randy Lerner to take full control of a club newly relegated from the Premier League — just days after the worst season in their history came to an end. The Villans had more managers and caretaker bosses (four) than league wins (three) this season, with Tim Sherwood, Kevin MacDonald, Remi Garde and Eric Black all spending time at the helm.
The disastrous season was littered with rows and bust-ups as fans who had watched a string of narrow escapes from the drop in recent seasons turned on the club’s flops.
But Xia has big ambitions to make the former European Cup winners a top six team once more. A new manager - expected to be Roberto Di Matteo, who delivered promotion from the second tier with West Brom in 2010 and won the biggest prize of the lot as Chelsea's interim manager four years ago - is the owner’s priority once the takeover is approved by the Premier League and Football League. The squad also needs a major overhaul, and many club staff have been made redundant following relegation.
A statement to announce the sale read: “Dr Xia’s immediate objective is to return Aston Villa to the Premier League and then to have the club finish in the top six, bringing European football back to Villa Park.
“He plans to make Aston Villa the most famous football club in China with a huge fan base.”
Since initially buying Villa in 2006 and bankrolling them to three successive sixth-place finishes under manager Martin O’Neill, Lerner has radically scaled back his spending.
It helped consign the club to fighting relegation for the past six seasons under O’Neill’s successors Gerard Houllier, Alex McLeish, Paul Lambert, Sherwood and, most recently, Garde.
The Frenchman quit in March, leaving Villa under Black as they finished the campaign with 12 defeats in their last 13 matches.
That woeful form and the lack of fight shown by their ‘stars’ infuriated fans, who turned against the likes of Joleon Lescott, Brad Guzan and Leandro Bacuna.
This season's relegation and the plummeting value of the club leaves Lerner more than £200m out of pocket.
He wrote on Wednesday night: “Finally, being conscious of the popular and dark pastime of wondering aloud how much was spent, or lost, I should like to think that I ‘left behind’ value which will hopefully endure and benefit this beloved old club.
“What I will say is that if spending to restore and preserve the wonderful Jacobean Holte Hotel at the southern tip of the ground, or researching and adding the Holte End mosaic as a nostalgic nod to that wonderful Leitch Stand of our past, add to the tally of personal losses then I can offer no counter argument other than to say I would do the same all over!”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/new-aston-villa-owner-tony-8001140 [ 此帖被羅力亞在2016-06-03 17:00重新編輯 ]
