Simon Jordan reveals shock Aston Villa takeover plan

Former Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan has revealed that he "looked at" taking over Aston Villa with a consortium.

The talkSPORT pundit was speaking about West Bromwich Albion's appointment of Steve Bruce when he shared that he had previously planned to buy Villa.

Former Villa manager Bruce will be unveiled to the media this afternoon at the Hawthorns and is a head coach Jordan knows well, having employed him at Palace in 2001.

"People give him [Steve Bruce] a lot of stick for his time at Aston Villa, they say he was dreadful and look at what Dean Smith did," Jordan said on talkSPORT.

"Let me tell you, I looked at that club, I looked at buying that club with a consortium.

"I saw what was behind the scenes at that club when they got relegated... It took a long time for it to get stabilised.

"With respect to Steve, while he went out of the door with people vilifying him, Dean Smith took the benefit of a platform he leapt off.

"I’m not diminishing what Dean achieved to get promoted that season, but it took all the c*** Bruce went through to get it stabilised that got Villa into better shape."

Bruce was appointed as the Villa manager following the sacking of Roberto Di Matteo back in 2016 and he nearly took the club up to the Premier League, but failed at the last hurdle, as Fulham won the Championship play-off final at Wembley in 2018.

The 1-0 defeat in the play-off final lead to the sale of the club as billionaires Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens swooped in to save Villa from financial turmoil.

Bruce was then sacked after a poor start to the 2018/19 campaign and replaced by Smith who guided his boyhood club back to the top-flight through the play-offs.