Martin Swain: Randy Lerner will find it hard to sell Aston Villa in Financial Fair Play era

The American owner has encountered plenty of difficulties in his eight-year tenure, many of them brought on by the huge misjudgements he made in his first weeks.

But most of all, his timing has always been lousy and it is again now he has formally instructed his bankers to seek out prospective buyers.

The significance of the announcement, and its timing, was not lost on one of Villa's most valued managers Graham Taylor as he assessed the news he had felt was coming for some time.

"This is a very important moment in the history of Aston Villa FC," said Taylor. "Is the new owner going to be a football person who understands the game now?

"Are they going to be capable of taking Villa back to the kind of club it was? Like a lot of supporters over the next few weeks, I will be keeping my fingers crossed."

Taylor's foreboding is justified because of how the landscape has so dramatically changed in the wake of FFP. It means were Lerner starting again, he would not be able to run up the kind of losses he incurred in raising Villa from its Doug Ellis-David O'Leary stand-off in 2006 because of the punishments indicated by UEFA.

Taylor said: "FFP does change the landscape, there is no doubt. Supporters have to understand you can no longer do what Randy did when he first arrived at Villa and invest such huge sums in the team. We now have a limit as to how much these people can put a club into debt without incurring serious sanctions.

"It's going to make it very difficult for Villa to catch up. When you start to take on some of these owners in a financial sense, it doesn't necessarily mean you are going to win. It's hard to see the answer for Aston Villa."

It wasn't quite as difficult an ambition when Lerner spotted a gap in the Champions League market eight years ago.

At that time fourth spot was open to challenge. Villa did under Martin O'Neill with a squad transformed by a £200m outlay, the biggest the club had ever known. But no sooner had Lerner signed the cheques than the huge investments made at Tottenham and Manchester City brought congestion to the top six scramble.

The end of that era sparked a four-year cost-cutting process which has returned Villa to exactly where Lerner picked them up – a slumbering giant cut off from the high terrain.

With his £62.6m purchase fee, it has cost him around £250m for the privilege but the road back this time looks even longer. In the super-rich circles in which he moves, any serious players would have made their move by now because Lerner's disaffection has been signalled by his growing lack of profile at the club.

The announcement puts Villa up on a more general notice board capable of attracting less credible would-be investors lured by fancy more than reality.

"New owners are not used to having a lot of money but what football gives them is a celebrity status they otherwise would not enjoy and that appeals to some," adds Taylor. "They don't have that without coming into football."

This could have been different for Lerner if he had not made the fateful error of believing American sporting governance could transfer seamlessly across the water.

The cultures are massively different and have expunged Villa of all its key Ellis-regime staff – and all their accumulated experience. He was left bereft of trusted guidance once O'Neill left.

Never was that more obvious than in the disastrous managerial picks of Gerard Houllier and then Alex McLeish – "I'm not sure Randy was given the best advice at that time," says Taylor with huge understatement – which aggravated the club's decline.

Lerner hoped for a legacy that would be more than the busted flush he now holds. But the only cards he has left to play must snare a suitable new owner.

With a hefty price tag and the top six many millions more distant, it might not be a straightforward task.