What a preseason it must be for Aston Villa fans. Instead of the usual round of apathy and planned Ellis Out demonstrations they’ve recently managed to snare one of the British game’s most highly respected managers in the form of Northern Irishman Martin O’Neill and are the objects of affection from men with deep pockets on both sides of the Atlantic as the long running Doug Ellis/Aston Villa association looks to be near an end.

O’Neill’s appointment will be key to Villa regaining any semblance of the position they have previously held in the English game. While silky skills and free flowing attacking football aren’t exactly the words most Leicester or Celtic fans would use to describe the Ulsterman’s footballing philosophies there can be no denying the organisation, teamwork and the idea of playing to each player’s strengths that O’Neill builds into each of his sides and a quick look at his trophy haul with each of last two clubs to see how successful he is at doing it.

Even more important for Villa’s short term and long term viability will be the battle to oust Doug Ellis from the boardroom. The fans have been campaigning to get rid of “Deadly” Doug for as long as I can remember but he seems to have ownership of Aston Villa caught in a vicelike grip, until this summer when it looks increasingly likely that a deal will be done with either the American owner of the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, billionaire Randy Lerner, or either of the English consortiums headed by life-long Villa fan Michael Neville or deputy judge Nicholas Padfield QC.

Randy Lerner certainly has the cash available to invest in the club and try and regain control of the debts which are mounting under the Ellis regime and while Michael Neville claims to have the financing in place to buy the club, he may yet be forced into joining forces with Nicholas Padfield’s AV06 group if he wants to really compete with the American.

Either way Villa fans are hoping to get one of them installed in the top office as soon as possible as the transfer window doesn’t have long to run and the Villa squad is looking increasingly threadbare. The prospect of getting rid of Doug Ellis at the same time will also be regarded as somewhat more than a slightly successful side effect.

After the cloak and dagger of the fake Sheikh scandal several months ago, is it completely ridiculous to believe that Aston Villa?s potential new owner Michael Neville could have lined Sven Goran Eriksson up as their new manager after all?

Neville has intimated that he has a manager all lined up should his takeover go through and with Sven?s agent having been spotted in the vicinity of Villa Park, tyongues are wagging throughout the Midlands that the formner England boss is set to replace David O?Leary in the Aston Villa hotseat.

Neville?s preferred option has been claimed to be Martin O?Neill who has Midlands links following his time as Leicester manager but with the season still a few weeks away the main activity at Villa Park looks to be in the boardroom before the thorny issue of a new manager is decided.

David O’Leary has had his contract terminated at Aston Villa despite the inquiry board set up by chairman Doug Ellis failing to prove his complicity in the damning players statement of criticism against the chairman released last week.

The inquiry did however highlight the lack of belief in O’Leary’s leadership amongst the Aston Villa senior players and in light of this the Villa board felt it was unable to keep the former Leeds United manager in the position he had held for three turbulent years.

Arguing publically with your chairman is one thing but to back a player revolt against him and then have the same players turn on you while saving their own hides in the aftermath is quite another and it looks highly unlikely that David O’Leary will be able to take up any high ranking football management post any time in the near future. With the financial fallout of his reign at Elland Road still hurting the Yorkshire club, he now can add the Villa Park debacle to his CV as he ponders his next move.

Fighting the chairman is a dangerous activity at any club but after so many years of Doug Ellis’ tyranny at Villa Park, O’Leary has belatedly found that he had nowhere left to turn after his own disloyalty to his employers was mirrored back at him by the very players that he thought he could count on as allies in the war against Ellis.

The celebrations of the Aston Villa supporters at the news of O’Leary’s dismissal further highlights just how far from reality the Irishman was in his last few days at the club. Another episode closes in the Villa Park soap opera although the aftermath may still have some legs as the search for a new manager (possibly Alan Curbishley) begins.

Aston Villa chairman Doug Ellis has hit back hard at yesterday’s statement reputedly from the Aston Villa squad berating him for a lack of investment in the club and for a series of petty cost cutting measures.

In a statement to the club’s official website Villa head of media and communications Phil Mepham said:

“The chairman is furious, because he has had no indication from any member of the playing or coaching staff of any dissatisfaction at the training ground. So this has come as a great surprise.”

“Once the ’story’ broke, I spoke to several senior members of the first-team squad, all of whom had no knowledge of the statement. All of them were surprised at its content. So to suggest this is a collective statement is ridiculous.”

With the season less than a month away and Villa fans becoming increasingly edgy over the lack of positive transfer activity, yesterday’s statement from the players seemed to be a direct message to the board that all was not well at the club but in true Doug Ellis style, it seems like he is ready to just bury his head in the sand and resist all calls for his departure or for adequate resources to be made available to the coaching staff.

It could be a long, hard season at Villa Park for all concerned.