It was not, however, made clear if this included proposed funds from the expected Ashley Young transfer or if indeed those funds would also be made available to the new manager.
Whatever the case may be, a big name target needs to be secured in order to issue a statement of intent. There is a lot of speculation about bit part transfers such as Michael Bradley, but these are just to pad out the existing squad and will eat up the wage bill. Granted, a certain amount of reinforcement is needed but if we lose Ash then Villa need a big name match-winner in his place.
A prime example would be Berbatov: A proven goal scorer to compliment Bullseye Bent, and a definite shirt seller (although I have opted to boycott the merchandise in protest to Randy's arrogance during the McLeish appointment).
Forget Craig Gardner; forget Joey Barton; forget Wes Brown. Bring Gary Cahill back to Villa Park- a player that will make the position his own and not warm the bench. We should go after players that clubs want to keep, not ones that they are trying to offload. Other clubs do it to us, so why don't we do it in return?
Of course, there will be a lot of disagreement on this subject, and this is simply my opinion (before the comments try to nail me to the wall). I welcome discussion on this matter, but it is a certain fact that if we sell our big names and replace them with a few also-rans or has-beens to make up the numbers then we are certainly sending out the wrong message.
Villa is already labelled as a 'selling club', and that is why the likes of Liverpool and United believe that they can treat VP as a shop. We buy the players, they improve, their international prospects improve, then we sell them on to one of the bigger clubs. What needs to happen now is if we sell a big name, we buy a big name as a direct replacement.
At this rate, we will have lost three of our key players in the last three summers. It needs to stop; otherwise the days of challenging for Champions League will be a distant memory.