Former Aston Villa chairman Sir Doug Ellis has no doubt it would be "ideal" for the club if someone similar to Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour could take them over.
Villa's current owner Randy Lerner, the American entrepreneur who bought the midlands outfit from Ellis in 2006, on Monday declared his intention to put them up for sale.
City have just won their second Barclays Premier League title since their Abu Dhabi takeover in 2008.
And Ellis told Sky Sports News: "He (Lerner) has admitted he would like to sell, we are all waiting to see who it is to, and we have to find someone who has the money - someone equivalent to the Sheikh, who I met at Manchester City the other week.
"He is a delightful chap, is passionate beyond measure and has billions of pounds of money.
"He is a young lad who, I must admit, would be the ideal person, if in fact we found the right one for Aston Villa."
Villa finished the 2013/14 Premier League campaign last weekend in 15th position and their final position has been only just above the relegation zone for the past three seasons.
But the club enjoyed relative success in the first few years of Lerner's ownership, securing three successive sixth-placed finishes up to the summer of 2010.
And Ellis said of Lerner: "He hasn't been bad for Aston Villa. In my view, he was the right one to choose at the time."
Villa boss Paul Lambert and chief executive Paul Faulkner are reportedly set to fly out to the United States this week for talks with Lerner.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article