FA Cup finalists Aston Villa are being eyed up for a £150m takeover by a consortium led by a one-time senior executive at London rivals Chelsea.

Paul Smith, former interim chief executive of Chelsea, is understood to have been secretly working on a Villa bid for around a year and, if successful, is considering handing former England captain Tony Adams a football role at the club.

Villa is one of only six British clubs to have won the European Cup, but fans are now more used to enduring an annual battle for Premier League survival. The club has been at the centre of takeover speculation for years, after it was last sold for £60m in 2006 to American financier Randy Lerner.

Last year, Lerner appointed Bank of America Merrill Lynch, to handle a sale of the club, with several parties thought to have lodged an interest.

Smith has formed a company called Halo to use as a vehicle to acquire Villa, as well as minority stakes in other football clubs, although a source close to the former Chelsea executive said the bid for the Birmingham club has been taking up the vast majority of his time.

Halo is thought to be close to raising the funds for its bid from a small group of investors.

Smith left Chelsea in 2007, following a quarrel with the club. Chelsea later “agreed to accept a finding of unfair dismissal and to pay full compensation” to Smith, although the businessman then lost a follow-up claim in which he alleged he had been denied a further payment of £366,250.

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