It was the day after Aston Villa’s FA Cup semi-final win over Liverpool and Tom Fox was still on “cloud nine” when he stood over the 13th tee at St Andrews, weighed up the 142 yards to the pin and took out a seven iron. “I knew the minute I hit it that it was a good shot,” the Villa chief executive says. “I was screaming all kinds of things at it to get in the hole, it bounced a couple of times and rolled in. I looked over at my friend who I’ve known almost my whole life and we just laughed.”

On the back of a hole-in-one at the spiritual home of golf, fewer than 24 hours after Villa had upset the odds to reach their first FA Cup final in 15 years, Fox could be forgiven for thinking this was the moment when all his stars were in alignment. “I bought two lottery tickets afterwards but it didn’t work,” he says, smiling.

Sitting in his office at Villa Park, Fox is on good form. This is the American’s first interview with a national newspaper since he left his role as Arsenal’s chief commercial officer last summer to accept Randy Lerner’s offer to take over the day-to-day running of Villa, and he comes across as man who is fiercely determined to deliver success and not expecting a tap on the shoulder any time soon to say the Midlands club will be in new hands.

Fox breaks into laughter when it is put to him there is a school of thought that the FA Cup final against Arsenal on 30 May could be Lerner’s last game as Villa’s owner. “I really don’t know how to respond to that,” he says, smiling. “I think I’d know if there was a sale imminent.”

After several questions aimed at getting to the bottom of the takeover situation, Fox says: “Look, there may be people out there who in their own mind think they want to buy Aston Villa. It’s nothing that we know about it. People are trying to fill the void of information with something. And I’m not suggesting you are irresponsible for asking these questions, but a lot of what is being said out there is just borderline irresponsible.

“I look at some of the things that are being written about the ownership and I just laugh. ‘Rich person interested in buying Villa.’ Of course there is. Why is that news? Tell me who it is, tell me what his offer is, tell me he’s engaged actively with the bank to do that, and that there’s actually engagement on the other side, and then you might have a story. I’ve haven’t seen any of those things happening.”

Fox says he hopes Lerner will be Villa’s owner “for a long, long time”. He speaks to his countryman pretty much every day – “sometimes Randy will wake up in the middle of the night with a couple of thoughts in his head” – and it is measure of how strong their relationship is that he describes Lerner as a “friend”.

He makes the point that Lerner, aged 53, is only a year older than him, which means they have plenty in common. “At one point Randy and I are going back and forth on email and he’s quoting Dylan lyrics and I’m going back with Steely Dan lyrics.”

Lerner has visited the Bodymoor Heath training ground twice since Tim Sherwood replaced Paul Lambert as manager in February, yet the billionaire is rarely seen at Villa Park these days and it is hard to escape the feeling that a man who put the club up for sale last summer no longer has the same level of interest.

Fox disagrees. “He’s not here as frequently, then you’ve made the leap to he’s detached and he’s lost interest. The fact is he’s got things happening in his personal life that mean he isn’t here as often. He’s raising a son in New York City, he’s got other projects, he makes his living in New York. I’ve never quite understood that leap: ‘If he’s not here, then he’s suddenly not as engaged.’ He knows everything that’s happening at this football club, he’s unbelievably passionate about it. When I called him after the FA Cup semi-final [which Lerner missed because of a bereavement], you should have heard it in his voice, it was fantastic.”

Pointing to the financial fair play rules introduced in 2013, Fox says it is misguided to think a wealthy benefactor could replace Lerner and transform Villa’s fortunes. “Even if he wanted to, an owner could not come in under the current financial regime that exists within the Premier League and invest as much money as Randy has in the club. It wouldn’t be allowed any more because of the profitability and sustainability rules.

“So if Randy decides to sell the club in the future, no matter who comes in, the plan will most likely be the same because you can’t come in and spend money on players the way clubs used to in the Premier League. You can invest money in infrastructure. Well, guess what? Randy Lerner did quite bit of that over the years. So that won’t change.

“The plan that we’ve got in place with the management team we’re building here, that plan will be the same, to maximise the revenue potential of the Aston Villa club brand on a global basis and to spend that money very effectively by putting experts into all the key areas of football operations.”

After five successive years spent fighting relegation, Fox says Lerner “now sees some light at the end of the tunnel with where we’re headed”. Villa are not out of the woods this season – they are only two points and two places above the bottom three prior to Everton’s visit on Saturday – but there is a renewed sense of optimism about the way the players are performing.

It was Fox who made the call to sack Lambert. The previous month he had publicly backed the Scot and said it was a “false narrative” to blame the manager, yet the sight of Villa sliding inexorably towards the relegation zone and playing so poorly forced a rethink. He made up his mind that a change had to be made, called Lerner “who asked some critical questions, like any good chairman would do”, and had the owner’s backing to dismiss Lambert. “I looked at the situation and thought: ‘It doesn’t appear as if anything we’re doing collectively, Paul included, is going to change where we’re headed right now.’”

Adamant from the outset that he wanted to make a long-term appointment, Fox travelled to Hertfordshire to meet Sherwood at his home and after three hours of talks drove back to the Midlands convinced he had found the right man to re-energise Villa and galvanise a group of players whose confidence was shot to bits.

“When we met, Tim started immediately talking about the squad: ‘Why is he doing this? Why he is playing there? How come he’s not in the squad?’” Fox says. “And he’s very good with the psychology of the team. Phil Jackson, who coached the Chicago Bulls to multiple championships in the NBA, one of his quotes was: ‘The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.’ So you’re stronger as a team if you’re all together. But you have to understand each other as individuals. And Tim really understands what players need on an individual basis to get the most out of them within the team dynamic.”

Fox does not, however, seek any credit for Sherwood’s appointment. “We got really lucky. I made the decision that I thought was the right decision at the time and it just so happened that there was a manager named Tim Sherwood available and that when I sat down and talked with him we were able to create a rapport. But Tim could have signed with QPR and I don’t know what we would have done and where we would have been. So I think we got lucky because he was available.”

From his discussions with the fans prior to Sherwood’s arrival – “Some of the feedback I’ve solicited, some of it unsolicited, which I still appreciate” he says, laughing – Fox was left in little doubt how supporters felt about the team’s performances. “Everyone said this is very difficult to watch.”

Under Sherwood Villa look like a totally different proposition, with Saturday’s narrow 3-2 defeat at Manchester City a case in point. “Football’s cruel. But you learn to take the positives,” Fox says. “I love the way that we fought back, that’s the type of team I think we are now. We can score, we can control the ball, we can put teams on the back foot, and that’s encouraging and fun to watch. So I know we can stay up if we do what we’re capable of and that’s a much better place to be in than a position where we need help. We don’t need help. We can do it ourselves.”

Christian Benteke’s return to form has been a feature of Villa’s revival under Sherwood and Fox agrees with the manager that the club cannot afford to get in a position where the Belgian’s contractual situation – he has two years remaining on his deal – is not addressed this summer.

Asked whether Villa plan to offer Benteke a new contract, Fox replies: “Absolutely. He’s young, he’s unplayable on his day, he’s incredibly important. I talk to his agent on a fairly regular basis. We’re not doing anything on it right now – we’re focused on the end of the season and the FA Cup – but Tim is 100% right: you don’t allow your players that are big assets at the club to be in a position where the club is disadvantaged, so you want to have them signed long term. I’m sure we’ll be having conversations with Christian and his people in the summer.”

Fox offers a bullish response to the question of whether it is realistic to think Villa can keep one of the Premier League’s most prolific goalscorers over the last three seasons. “Look, I think the problem is people lately think of Villa as a club fighting relegation and being 15th or 16th. I look at Villa and see a club that should be seventh, eighth or ninth in the Premier League on a perennial basis, and that’s what we’re all trying to do, put the club in a place where that’s possible.

“I think if we put ourselves in that position we can keep any player. I think we have to [make a real play] to keep Christian in the summer.”

Underachievement at Villa Park, Fox says, has not been confined to results on the pitch. Although there is no prospect of pulling off the sort of multimillion-pound deals he negotiated at Arsenal in his five years at the Emirates, Fox believes that Villa can increase their commercial revenue streams by £8m-£10m per year and he goes on to produce a remarkable statistic to support his theory that the club should aim to be the best of the rest outside the top six.

“That’s exactly where we belong and I’ll tell you why,” he says. “Compare Aston Villa in terms of global viewers who watch our matches to every other club in European football, excluding the top six in the Premier League, and where do you think we rank? Third. Real Madrid, Barcelona, Aston Villa. More people watched Aston Villa on a global basis last year than would have seen Bayern Munich. That’s the power of the Premier League.”

Fox remains confident Villa will still be playing in the top flight next season and assuming those relegation fears are allayed he can look forward to renewing acquaintances with some familiar faces at Wembley. “To be in the most iconic, oldest tournament of its type, Villa and Arsenal, to me it’s classic,” Fox says, smiling. “I’ll feel really good being in that stadium with another great club, like Arsenal, and I’ll feel even better if we win it.”