The Remaster: 100 Owners, Number 99 - Doug Ellis (Aston Villa)

"Deadly Doug" was one of the old school of football club owners who survived the transition of the English game into the Premier League era.

If you ask the question of why the best-supported club in England’s second biggest city have managed just one English championship in the last one hundred and two years, there is a chance that some—if not many, now that it’s so much longer ago—Aston Villa supporters will have a ready-made answer: Doug Ellis.

Ellis was one of the few English football club owners to survive what was a near-extinction level event for others of his generation, the formation of the Premier League and the subsequent influx of foreign capital into the top division of the game, and when he left the club in 2006, it was on his own terms and with a very healthy pay-off.