Doug Ellis

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Herbert Douglas Ellis, OBE (born January 3, 1924 in Chester, Cheshire) is an entrepreneur, best known as the former chairman of Aston Villa Football Club.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Aston Villa 3 Reputation 4 Criticisms 5 Family life 6 Trivia 7 References

[edit] Early life

'Deadly' Doug Ellis^[1] began life in a poor family with a widowed mother. Before he was 40, he had become a millionaire by pioneering package holidays to Spain.

[edit] Aston Villa

Ellis was a controversial chairman and major shareholder of Aston Villa for two separate spells; the first being from 1968 to 1975. Ellis was replaced as chairman and finally ousted from the board in 1979. During his absence Aston Villa enjoyed its greatest period of success in modern times, winning the Football League title in 1981 and the European Cup in 1982.

Ellis returned as chairman in 1982 and remained there until selling to Randy Lerner in 2006. Some fans blame him for the decline of the club after the European Cup victory in 1981/2^[2]. Within five years the club was relegated from the top flight, with many of the European Cup-winning team being sold to other teams, although it can be argued that this was due to large debts built up during the previous regime.

In 1996 Doug Ellis owned 47 percent of Aston Villa. In May 1997 the club floated on the stock market with a valuation of £126m. Ellis sold a number of his shares at flotation, reducing his shareholding to around one-third of the total shares. It is reported that Ellis made £4m from this deal, although the floatation also raised funds to pay for the construction of the new Trinity Road Stand and for the £7m transfer of Stan Collymore from Liverpool, among others. Since the flotation, the club's share price had fallen by almost 90%.

Some Villa fans were disappointed with the destruction of the 1920s Trinity Road stand ("the St Pancras of football", as a Sunday Times reporter called it in 1960), which many believe should have been a listed building. The replacement although state of the art, never had the grandeur of the original.

Ellis was reported to be the first football club director to pay himself a salary (in 2005 it was £290,000 after a 12% increase from the previous year) when it was made legal by The Football Association in the early 1980s. Along with this, his professed love of Aston Villa Football Club has been questioned in light of the fact that he has served on the Boards of Villa's arch-rivals Birmingham City, Derby County and Wolverhampton Wanderers (as Chairman).

In 2004, at the age of 80 and suffering from prostate cancer, Ellis agreed to relinquish some of his control of the club by appointing Bruce Langham as chief executive. Langham resigned in May 2005, reportedly after a disagreement with Ellis.

In 2005, he underwent a heart bypass operation and, after a three-month absence, returned to his role at Villa Park soon after the start of the 2005/2006 season.

On 14 August 2006, it was announced that Ellis had agreed to sell the club to American billionaire, Randy Lerner in a deal worth £63 million. Ellis stood aside when the takeover was completed on 19 September 2005, becoming a President Emeritus (Life President) of the club.

[edit] Reputation

Ellis had a reputation as one of English football's most single-minded and complacent chairmen. He caused a storm among supporters in the mid-1990s when the Witton Lane Stand was renamed The Doug Ellis Stand, a change Ellis claimed to know nothing about (indeed, many Villa supporters refer to the stand as the "Witton Lane" to this day, refusing to accept this change). Critics point to the fact that other members of the club's board, publicly at least, rarely challenged Ellis's management style and decisions. Either way, it cannot be denied that Ellis was a major figure in the history of the club.

[edit] Criticisms

Supporters and former club managers criticised Ellis's alleged lack of ambition^{[3] [4]}, noting that the club often struggled to bring in top players. Ellis responded that his approach had always been one of financial prudence, helping to avoid the fate of big-borrowing clubs such as Leeds United. It has to be remembered that under John Gregory the club had been one of the biggest spenders in the Premier League, but Gregory always wanted 2-3 more players. Very few Gregory signings were ever sold at a profit, nearly all sold at staggering losses.

There were several supporter-led campaigns for Ellis to stand down from his position, and in his final years at the club a number of interested parties made unsuccessful attempts to buy his stake in the club.

[edit] Family life

He has three sons and has been married to Heidi Marie since 1963. He is reportedly worth around £10,000,000, much of it arising from selling off his Aston Villa shares.

[edit] Trivia

• Ellis was awarded an OBE in the 2005 New Year's honours for services to football.
• It has been reported that, on several occasions, he has claimed to have invented the bicycle kick.
• He has claimed that he was once a professional footballer on the books of clubs including Tranmere Rovers. However, there is no record of any player bearing his name ever being registered with the FA.

[edit] References