I’m extremely excited to have the scoop on this, although I should admit it’s through a friend connected to the sponsor rather than any inside information from Villa Park.

I’ve just got off the phone with my friend in San Francisco (yes, it’s just after 5am there right now, she’s not overly happy with my guerrilla tactics) and she confirmed to me that her employers are in advanced negotiations with Randy Lerner to put their name on the front of Aston Villa shirts from next season. She’s hazy on details, but she believes it could be a 3 year deal worth around $15m.

I was tipped off about this late last night after this mock up was sent to me by a Nike employee. It looks like it’s all starting to come together, so I’m pleased to exclusively reveal that the new Aston Villa Shirt sponsor for 2010/11 will be…

EDIT 4 (July 15th 2010): The new home and away kits for 2010/11 are being launched today and I know people will be hitting this page looking for pictures. This post was just a poor attempt at an April Fool’s and I didn’t expect it to still be getting traffic. Click on the button below for the real deal.

Aston Villa 2010/11 Home and Away Kit Launch Pictures

This makes perfect sense as I’ve been hearing whispers about Villa and Twitter a lot in the last couple of weeks. Someone even joked that we may be changing our name to Aston Twitter. It seems ludicrous, but then I stumbled on this and I’m not so sure any longer…

I’m OK with the sponsorship deal, but I can’t pretend to be happy at the prospect of changing our name. Stranger things have happened though.

What do you think?

EDIT: This Just In – Twitter Park?

EDIT 2 (May 4th 2010) : I didn’t expect this post to still be receiving hits and I hope readers are noticing the date it was published before getting carried away! However, there is what appears to be a genuine glimpse of just the shoulder of the new shirt in a leaked picture of Man Utd’s new home shirt here.  Sorry.

EDIT 3 (June 10th 2010): This post has continued to receive visitors and I’ve even seen rumours out in the wild about Twitter being the new sponsors. Not my intention, it was just an April Fool’s Day prank. Anyway, I’m delighted that the club have just announced that the real sponsor from 2010/11 will be FxPro.

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