Randy Lerner's right-hand man on Martin O'Neill, the team and the Villa fans
RANDY Lerner’s right-hand man General Charles Krulak admits to concerns about the future of football if the giants of the Premier League are allowed to continue to carry on with their spending.
But the 67-year-old American, a former deputy director of the White House Military Office who was honoured with the Purple Heart with gold star for service in Vietnam, says that, far from giving up the fight, Lerner and Villa boss Martin O’Neill are driven by a burning desire to emulate the golden era of Ron Saunders and Tony Barton.
Krulak believes Villa’s ultimate goal has to be to lift the European Cup again.
That sounds far-fetched, given the financial muscle of Manchester United, Chelsea and now Manchester City in the Premier League and to a lesser extent Liverpool and Arsenal, while Real Madrid have blown even those five out of the water this summer.
But Krulak says Villa must continue to set their sights high.
“I am speaking as a fan.
“We have a saying in the military: “Aim High, Hit High”.
“If you don’t set your goals high, then you start to find yourself satisfied with being in the middle of the pack.
“It is important for Villa to have lofty goals. That is exactly what enables people to achieve great things.
“I am one of those people who would love, at some point in the future, Aston Villa to emulate holding that trophy above our heads.
“We tried to send that signal to the fans by having that ’82 team coming back and having a weekend with their club (against Sheffield United two years ago).
“It said to the fans that the ’82 squad and their accomplishment was not forgotten.”
The problem for Villa and the “best of the rest”, like Everton and Tottenham, is that, while the top four continue to dominate in the Premier League, the gap in money terms between them and those outside the top four becomes greater.
“It is a very complicated question,” muses Krulak. “Obviously we are in a free-market society. You have players out there who are in the market.
“It is like someone at Barclays (bank) or someone working for an automobile company. They deserve to get what the market says. At the same time it is complicated because the unintended consequence of this is to have a negative impact overall on the game of football.
“If you have basically the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ and it is perpetuated, then it can cause problems.”
Krulak admits that clubs like Villa not only have to be seen to be able to compete on a level playing field with the big boys, but also have to deliver success themselves.
Expectations remain high at Villa Park after successive top six finishes.
“In the economic environment that we see ourselves in today and that will probably exist for a little bit longer, it will become more and more difficult to maintain that kind of spending, particularly if the results don’t come quickly,” he said.
“Each member of a board has a shared responsibility to make sure the money they are putting in is given a payback.
“If all of a sudden that is not seen, then you are going to have problems.”
But Krulak stresses that for a fourth season running under O’Neill, the manager and board will be going all out to be successful.
“I don’t think at the end of the day anybody at Villa is looking at the other teams and saying ‘my gosh, they have spent x number of pounds. We give up’,” he said.
“Yes we have lost Gareth Barry and, yes, we have lost Martin Laursen, but we have extremely talented lads on our squad and are very proud of them.
“Randy has a lot of faith in Martin. He is supportive and Martin is doing what he has got to do.
“This is not August 31. This is still July. We have this saying: ‘Trust in Martin’. That’s what we do.”
With Villa having opened their summer spending with a move for Stewart Downing, Krulak says the boardroom is backing O’Neill’s ability to get a team without superstars to gel.
“At the end of the day, one of the beauties of Martin O’Neill is his ability as a leader to identify talent and mould that talent into a team to enable
