There has been scant actual mentions of a “five year plan” from Villa Park in the last three years, but somewhere along the way it was referenced (quite probably by someone like Fitzgerald) and picked up by fans eager to dampen the fervour of less patient fans looking for big spending, instant success. It’s then become a fulcrum of argument between two camps among the fanbase.

I’ve always suspected that some fans have taken the five year plan too literally, perhaps imaging a gantt chart hanging on the office wall full of detailed milestones and itemised deliverables. That’s never been my interpretation. I preferred the idea that it would be a sort of working plan that would outline annual investments and expected returns, both financially and on the pitch. Probably set in paper, but not in stone. The goal being that after 5 years the club would be challenging very seriously for Champions League and, more importantly, would have sufficient talent coming through the ranks and money through the turn styles to sustain this position for the future. Read that last sentence back if you need to, it’s quite important.

Now, this is just my interpretation and it’s an assumption I naturally make as it’s what I would do. Some people ask “what would Jesus do?”, but call me arrogant, I ask “what would I do?”. Whatever. It seems pretty obvious and straightforward to me, but then what do I know, I’m just some bloke with a website?!? No matter how much money I had, I wouldn’t come in and throw hundreds of millions at the task of rebuilding the club in a season or two as it’s completely unsustainable and frankly very stupid.

Sometimes I get the impression that there are some vocal members of the Aston Villa fanbase who actually would like the Chairman to throw stupid amounts of money at the club and resent him not doing exactly that. I really do get that impression and I find it so sad. We have an owner who’s the envy of English football fans throughout the world, some of whom would give their left testicle to have Randy Lerner at their own club.

Mr. Lerner is famously shy when it comes to talking to the press and that’s not something I blame him for at all, especially when it comes to the British media. This is manor from heaven for people who like to speculate about the man as there’s little to contradict their fanciful little theories, but then again, there’s nothing to confirm them either. However, this week Randy did conduct a number of interviews, or at least an interview with a number of journalists. (I’ve never had any contact with journalism so I can’t say for certain how it went down, but it’s clear that this wasn’t just an email fired from the Villa Park PR department to the sports wires as some might cynically speculate).

There’s actually quite a lot of material to quote, but I’m just going to quote something already seized upon elsewhere, but in context we’ll see something completely different. Here’s the quote in full…

I really don’t view the credit crunch as a big driver of the funding for the summer and I would expect to invest less than last summer. When we set out to build the club we expected year four to mean more modest spending than year three. I’m thinking more in terms of what we had planned to do, rather than checking to see if a bank account has less money in it, or whether I feel the squad is fine the way it is.

Wait. What’s that?? He’s being asked about whether the credit crunch, which is really something we talk about kicking in last September, effecting this summer’s spending. He’s “thinking more in terms of what [they] had planned to do”?? He’s talking about “year three” and “year four”?? Oh, what’s that?? Can you say FIVE YEAR PLAN!?!?!? See what I’m driving at here??

This more complete quote came from The Telegraph and to put the piece in context, it’s worth noting that Randy was also talking in the same interview(s) that day about stadium expansion. Check out the Express and Star partially quoting this, but also mentioning the stadium plans. In simple terms, the plan for this year was probably to be able to spend less on player acquisitions than the previous year, but put some money into improving Villa Park (notwithstanding that they didn’t know that money would be available from the Olympic Planning Committee at the time, but certainly do now). OK, I’m speculating now, but it makes more sense than claiming the billionaire American owner only renovated the Holte Hotel for purely business reasons doesn’t it?? Because that’s what these billionaires are really after – the profit on a pint of best and a packet of pork scratchings or at least the resale value on fancy pub!!

But look, the point is that Randy has spoken to the media and that’s very rare. What he’s said is all over the internet and it’s not hard to find, so don’t just take little quotes spoon-fed out of context with other people’s interpretations here and there, go search out as much as you can and make your own mind up. If you read as much of what he has to say as you can and you come to a negative conclusion about the man then you either have some amazing super-human insight or you’re brain dead. Maybe the definition of “legend” is a personal thing, but I think this man is one of the best things to happen to the club that I love in my life time. He may well have an Aston Villa tattoo, but I’m thinking about getting a Randy Lerner tattoo!!

Hey, if that sounds a bit ghey to you… imagine having someone like Mike Ashley owning the Villa.  Yeah, ’nuff said, right?!?!