Randy Lerner no longer a dollar billionaire. Will it have a knock on effect to Aston Villa?

The Forbes billionaire list came out today and it had one notable person missing; Randy Lerner. Now, while I'm sure he's not going to be short a few quid and he'll probably get it all back one day, when the markets get better, in the short term, will it have an impact on what we can do as a club this summer?

It's quite an important question, especially if we finish in the top four and we're playing in the Champions League next season and one I'm sure will have a few people talking, but will it impact us as a club?

Not that I know the details but I'd suspect Mr Lerner didn't put all his money into one pot and that it's spread out a bit. So, if we assume that it is spread out a bit, say over 50 investments, there is every chance maybe a few of those have gone belly-up, but the chances are most are just bottoming out, or fingers crossed, about to bottom out.

When this whole mess has finally bottomed out there is only one direction these shares can go and when that starts to happen I suspect we'll see Mr Lerner back in that Forbes list of billionaires, but it might be a couple of years.

But let's say it does take a couple of years, hell, let's say it takes five years, will this have an impact on our club? I don't think so, in so much that if you've got money it's easy to borrow money and while his money might all be paper money at the moment, if he's holding a lot of it, there is a value in it, not just today, based on what the stock market says it's worth, but the banks know these stocks and shares are going to bounce back again one day, so they'll also see the long term benefits of lending money.

So, our owner might not be in the list, but it's not a permanent thing and he's hardly going to be short a few quid, he'll bounce back, much like this blog will after moving and losing it's domain name and all the content. If you didn't know, this is the first proper football post on this site, for an explanation as to why, read this post. For the record, I'm still hurting, but hopefully this first post, on a new domain will cheer me up.

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