For Lerner it must be a sobering experience on which to reflect, in particular when he looks over the balance sheet. The former Cleveland Browns owner has pumped a small fortune into Villa – £206m by 2010 alone, which put him behind only Roman Abramovich at Chelsea and Sheikh Mansour at Manchester City at that time, and close to another £100m since – and yet he has seen the club haemorrhage money, season after season, and flirt with relegation in each of the past four years.
It is hard to think of another owner of a Premier League club who has spent so much of his own money and, in terms of performance on the pitch, ended up with so little to show for it. Under Lerner Villa's final Premier League position each year, starting with 2007, reads: 11th (£2.8m), sixth (£7.6m), sixth (£46.2m), sixth (£37.6m), ninth (£54m), 16th (£17.7m), 15th (£51.8m) and 15th.
The figures in brackets are the losses that Reform Acquisitions Limited, Lerner's holding company which owns Villa and a number of related companies, recorded each year – £217.7m in total, with this season's accounts still to come. It is little wonder that Lerner, who waived repayment of £90m in loans in December, decided enough was enough.
