O’Neill – Spend, Spend, Spend

Aston Villa’s CEO Richard FitzGerald says there is money to spend in the summer and plenty of it!

The board and Richard have already stated Champions League is their aim and with the backing of owner and chairman Randy Lerner, despite the fact we have a long way to go, we should now at least stand a chance!

FitzGerald said:

‘We want to be around the top of the Premiership playing Champions League football and you need world-class players for that. We showed in January that we are prepared to make a big commitment to bringing in players and Randy has freed up a transfer pot for Martin. People might have thought we pushed the boat out signing Ashley Young, but I can guarantee significant transfer funds have been made available, which is money coming from the owner.’

Adding, at the press conference launching the new club badge, ‘No-one has put a figure on that sum, but we wouldn’t have come out and said we want to be competing at the top of the Premiership and in the Champions League if we didn’t know what that entailed.’

He also says that Villa will have to learn to stand on their own two feet and not constantly expect money from Randy Lerner.

‘We are in an investment phase and we realise there will be a lag between revenues and spending for a while but, eventually, we want to commercialise. Americans understand entertainment and the value of entertainment better than the Brits and, more specifically, they understand about the value of entertainment on television and the importance of television.’

Adding, ‘We want to fill Villa Park. There’s very few successful teams that don’t have full stadiums. How are we going to do that? We’re going to make sure the season-ticket prices are reasonable and make sure we enhance the matchday experience. We’ve got to work hard at filling the stadium and keeping fans and stakeholders happy.’

I’m sure a few stars in the summer will add a few thousand bums on seats come kick off next season. Happy days!

I’ll start a new sticky player link article on the front page soon, we got through over 1000 comments in January, the summer will probably lead to overload!