Aston Villa owner Tony Xia has decided he is willing to listen to offers to sell the club after failing to achieve promotion back to the Premier League in his first two seasons in the West Midlands, according to the Daily Star.
The newspaper claims on their website that the Chinese businessman values Villa at £100million, two years after buying the club from Randy Lerner in a deal worth £76million.
After losing the Championship play-off final to Fulham last week, Villa are set for a very busy summer as they aim to avoid breaking Financial Fair Play regulations.
And now in a major bombshell, it appears that Xia may be looking to cash in on the West Midlands club with it set for a third season of Championship football.
OPINION
Xia’s message to fans earlier this week implied that he would be in it for the long haul to try and get Aston Villa back to the Premier League. He invested a lot of money into the transfer budget in his first few months in the Midlands, but ultimately Roberto di Matteo wasted heaps of cash on transfer fees and wages. Villa still have the likes of Ross McCormack and Micah Richards not even playing for the club while earning a major weekly wage, and that financial mismanagement by the club is simply why they are in this mess. Xia was meant to come in and sort out the mess that Lerner had left before him, but it seems that the same mistakes have been made. Villa’s big-money signings have pretty much all flopped while their cheaper deals have seen players perform better. Xia may not be around to see what happens next, given his willingness to offload the club. But it is just a reminder of how bleak the situation is at Villa Park right now if the owner is willing to jump ship.