Matt Maher: West Brom are hoping to strike gold, but danger is lurking
Now five summers on, it feels safe to say the best decision Tony Xia ever made for Villa was selling to the right people.
With money having run out and the club hurtling toward administration in July 2018, Xia entertained a series of potential investors and would-be purchasers knowing if a deal could not be struck, everything would be lost.
To his good fortune but even more so Villa’s, a pair of billionaires stepped forward with a deal which would both permit Xia to save face in China and erase the threat of financial Armageddon in an instant.
The episode remains one of the most remarkable in Villa’s history. Those billionaires, Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens, tasked a team of around 30 lawyers with carrying out a full-scale audit of the books in the space of just a couple of days before proceeding with the deal.
Though it’s been said before, it will always bear repeating: Villa truly were the club who struck it lucky and then some.
Fast forward to the present day and the hope is history might repeat itself with Albion.
News the club’s Chinese owners are actively seeking investment and will consider either a partial or full sale is obviously encouraging. So too is the knowledge their valuation of the club, thought to be in the region of £60million including debts, is realistic.
