Premier League Weekend Review: Are Villa really up for sale, or is Lerner just being clever?

Villa owner Randy Lerner has financed new signings despite putting the club up for sale

Aston Villa have made a promising start to the Premier League despite uncertainty about their future ownership. Ralph Ellis wonders if chairman Randy Lerner might really fancy staying after all...

I knew a man who owned a lower League side that went through a couple of relegations, complete with angry protests from supporters at different times.

On his route to his office every morning he had to drive under a railway bridge on which somebody had climbed up to paint a slogan telling him, in two short words that began and ended with the same letter, what they felt he should do.

His answer was to very publicly put the club up for sale. He never named a price, but whenever people were urging him to go, his defence became that he was trying to leave, but there was nobody to take over. In the meantime he would just do his best to keep the club ticking over. The protests subsided. And the truth was he never really planned to sell it in the first place.

I rather suspect that Aston Villa's Randy Lerner has found the same strategy. After two seasons in which the billionaire has been trying to slash costs and get some control on the spending at Villa Park, he was running into the same sort of fury from supporters.

So he announced he had put the club up for sale. Guess what? So far nobody has come up with the asking price, but while we're waiting he's keeping it all properly funded, even allowing his manager Paul Lambert to spend some money. After seven points from nine games nobody is making angry noises at the absentee American owner any longer.

Does Lerner really want to go? Your guess is as good as mine. But the more that Villa start to pick up points, the more the Holte End supporters begin to sing about "Paul Lambert's claret and blue army", as they did during yesterday's win over Hull, the more likely he is to be happy to keep things ticking along.

Villa have made a sea change of policy this year. After two seasons of Lambert trying to bin his highest earners and sign inexperienced youngsters, the manager has made a U-turn. His summer signings have all been experienced pros, and he's recalled Darren Bent and Alan Hutton from training with the kids to be involved in his first team.

The result is a far tougher and more streetwise team, and far from fighting relegation they might just turn out to be value if you can get on them anywhere within the current spread between 4.03/1 and 5.85/1 for a top ten finish.

The window looks certain to close tonight (sorry, slam shut), with skipper Ron Vlaar still at the club and the first priority of new chief executive Tom Fox will be to tie him down on a new contract. Christian Benteke is a couple of weeks from being fit to restore a genuine goal threat.

And there's little doubt that Roy Keane is having a considerable influence behind the scenes in terms of planting a winning mentality. It might just be that a man whose rage for perfection has seen him fall out with players in previous management roles is better suited to be a number two where he can enforce on behalf of the boss without the same pressure to make him too angry when things go wrong.

Ironically putting the club up for sale has brought stability. But then I wonder if, just like my old friend, that's exactly what Lerner intended all along.