During the 2006–07 English football season, Aston Villa F.C. competed in the FA Premier League. It was Villa's first season under the management of Northern Irishman Martin O'Neill, who was appointed as manager following the sacking of David O'Leary at the end of the previous season.

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Aston Villa

2006–07 season
Chairman	Randy Lerner
Manager	Martin O'Neill
FA Premier League	11th
FA Cup	Third round
League Cup	Fourth round
Top goalscorer	League: Gabriel Agbonlahor (9) All: Gareth Barry Gabriel Agbonlahor (10)
Highest home attendance	42,551 (vs. Tottenham, Man Utd, Liverpool, Sheff Utd)
Lowest home attendance	27,450 (vs. Bolton)
Average home league attendance	36,214
Home colours Away colours
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In August 2006, it was confirmed Randy Lerner had reached a £62.6m agreement with Aston Villa to take over the club. The statement to the London Stock Exchange confirmed that 60% of the club's shares, including the 39% stake of Doug Ellis had been sold to Lerner, beating competition from consortia led by Michael Neville, Nicholas Padfield QC, and Athole Still. Eleven days after the announcement, the LSE confirmed that Lerner had secured 59.69% of Villa shares, making him the majority shareholder. Lerner appointed himself Chairman of the Board of the club. The BBC reported in September 2006 that Lerner had moved closer to taking full control of the club, after increasing his share to 85.5%.^[1]

By the time that the deadline passed in September 2006, Lerner had secured the acceptance of 89.69% of the shareholders. Due to the acceptance only being 0.31% below the conditional limit, Lerner accepted it and made the bid unconditional. On September 19, 2006, Aston Villa PLC executive chairman Doug Ellis and his board resigned, and were replaced by Randy Lerner as chairman with General Charles C. Krulak, Bob Kain and Michael Martin serving as non-executive directors. At the close of the deal in 2006, Lerner became only the second American owner of a Premiership club. Ellis became a President Emeritus (Life President) of the club.^[2]

Villa started life under Martin O'Neill strongly and were the last team in the Premier League to be beaten, going nine matches without defeat and taking points against the likes of Arsenal and Chelsea away before a 3–1 loss at Liverpool. A run of 11 games without victory during the middle of the season dragged Villa down to 14th place, putting paid to their early-season hopes of Champions League qualification, but Villa rallied and only lost 3 of their last 15 games to finish comfortably in 11th.

There were debuts for Ashley Young (210), Stiliyan Petrov (185), John Carew (113), Shaun Maloney (30), Isaiah Osbourne (19), Phil Bardsley (13), Chris Sutton (8), Didier Agathe (5), and Gábor Király (5).^[3]

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