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There's no single reason why Aston Villa plunged from European nights to relegation fights in the space of a few years, but Martin O'Neill's ill-timed walk out was very much a tipping point for former owner Randy Lerner.

Six relegation scraps, three years in the Championship, 10 managers and several CEOs later, Villa are still putting the building blocks in place to reach the heights from which they fell over a decade ago. The club last finished in the top half of the Premier League in 2010-2011, and despite the hundreds of millions of pounds splashed on transfers and infrastructure in the past years under current owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens, breaking a cycle of mediocrity and failure would be viewed as huge progress at this stage.

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