Millwall chairman John Berylson has revealed why it took so long for him to get involved in the football side of the club.

He told Sky Sports News: "A few years ago, the company was in significant financial distress and minutes or weeks away from a bad payment that was due.

"I knew some of the financial advisors they [Millwall] had. I had come across their prior chairman, at the time, when he was trying to raise money. He had resigned.

"The company was essentially, apart from Heather Rabbatts, leaderless. I think she was completely alone at the time.

"So we came in and lent the company some money in November of 2006, without really exposing ourselves too much but getting them out of the financial distress.

"In March of 2007, I became the public company chairman and in October 2007, I became the operating controlling chairman of the football club as well as the entire company."

He quipped: "I thought I'd best wait until I understood what offsides meant!"

Since then, Berylson has proved to be an excellent chairman, by bringing in Kenny Jackett as manager and backing him to the hilt in the transfer market.

When asked if he expects to make money from football, Berylson replied: "I would hope so, at some point. Every business with been in has been long-term. I don't think anybody can go into something and expect something short-term. As we've seen with this financial debacle last year, all these people with all this money made it...well, I'll be kind and call it 'irregularly'.

"But the fact of the matter is, hard work generlly brings in money and I think that's true here in football.

"I think if we do our job, we can create value in the football club.

"Millwall also have some real estate opportunities that we will try to figure out. I'm not a real estate person or developer, so I'm the wrong one to ask about the real value there."

When asked about his plans on the transfer front, Berlyson said: "What I've said, publicly, is that I was a little tired in investing in losses.

"I prefer to invest in personnel and players. I stand by that. We've already begun that process. We signed a player [Steve Morison for £130k] last week from Stevenage, their high scorer.

"So that process has started and I think I've already put my money where my mouth is."

At this rate, Berylson is unlikely to hear the chants of "Where's the money gone" that rang out at The Den after the best talents of their FA Cup final team were sold on the cheap and not adequately replaced.

Berylson seems to understand that what fans want is success and the American seems determined to bring that to Millwall.