EPL club Aston Villa Owner Randy Lerner "looks destined to begin the new season still owning" the club after Manager Tim Sherwood revealed that takeover talks at the Midlands club were now "dead," according to Brendan McLoughlin of the LONDON TIMES. Lerner had been in talks with "a mystery consortium over the potential sale of Villa this summer" for around £150M ($234.5M), with "exclusivity believed to have been granted last month, only for negotiations to collapse." Sherwood: "I think it's dead now to be honest. It was fairly live but I think the people who were talking are now not there." Although the club "remains on the market, it leaves Lerner facing up to the increasingly likely prospect" that his attempts to sell up "will be met with frustration for a second successive summer" (LONDON TIMES, 7/14). In London, John Percy reported Lerner admitted in May that he would "step down as chairman if he failed to secure a sale" and it remains to be seen what the American billionaire's "next move will be." Sherwood: "The chairman is picking it up and running with it now. I'm not sure if anyone is too close now -- until it's done it's never there" (TELEGRAPH, 7/14). The BBC reported Sherwood added that he expects Christian Benteke and Fabian Delph to "stay at Villa Park this summer." Benteke has been linked with a £32M ($50M) move to Liverpool. Sherwood said, "I think Liverpool -- I looked the other day -- have six or seven strikers at the club. Now I'm not sure how many they actually need. We know Christian is a very good player and we want to keep hold of him" (BBC, 7/14).
