Villa manager Martin O’Neill has hit back at captain Gareth Barry’s comments and has reiterated that it will take £18million to take him to Liverpool.
The Villa boss was irritated by Barry’s quotes in a national newspaper yesterday when he said: “Villa kept saying they wanted me to stay but I haven’t heard from them for weeks.
“It’s seven weeks since the season finished, but while the gaffer’s found time to be a pundit for the BBC at Euro 2008, he hasn’t found time to speak to me.”
Barry’s outburst has surely sealed his departure from Villa, with the next part of his exit strategy to put in a transfer request if he doesn’t get his move soon.
Villa will now seek a minimum of £18m for their skipper, some £5m below Liverpool’s third bid of £13m.
A fourth bid still hasn’t been forthcoming and Villa believe Liverpool haven’t got the money.
O’Neill hit back, saying: “My chairman and I were surprised with the comments attributed to Gareth Barry. Contrary to what was reported, we desperately wanted to keep Gareth at Villa Park and he knows that.
“We asked both Gareth and his agent to consider what had been discussed at our meeting which included a variety of options to motivate the player.
“But Gareth came back from England international duty in June and reiterated his intention to join Liverpool and he told me so.
“But Liverpool’s valuation of Gareth has been consistently well short of our own and at the moment remains so.
“We have made our position clear in respect of Liverpool’s interest, but if Liverpool meet our valuation then Gareth Barry will get his express wish to leave Villa Park.”
Meanwhile, TPS Turku remain on course to meet Villa in the Intertoto Cup after seeing off the challenge of Lisburn Distillery.
The Finnish side beat Distillery 3-1 in their first round, second leg game this afternoon, going through 6-3 on aggregate.
TPS Turku will now play Odense BK of Denmark in the second round and the winners of that tie then go on to face Villa.
15 Comments
its nice of martin o’neill to realise that being the villa manager is his full time job and not a pundit for the bbc, for gods sake sort out the barry situation one way or another and then buy some players and quick.
the euro qualifier is fast approaching and you have done nothing to strengthen a very, very small squad, if we mess this back door into europe opportunity i for one will be expecting martin o’neill to receive a lot of well deserved flack.
well said garry !
Garry, what more do we need to say! Fantastic comments
MON hasn’t done enough to strength the team. Who have we signed?!?! Sadly I can’t see us performing as well as last season without investment. Come on MON sign some decent players so we can push on for Europe.
Honestly did you bunch used to sit by DOL by any chance? Fickle or what!
MON got us to 6th in the league - the transfer window hasn’t even opened yet - how many other teams have bought players so far (Yes apart from Spurs)??
And also been a BBC pundit? Out of interest he’s just spent 3 weeks watching 300 of the best players in Europe. And this took up THREE hours of his day. 2 questions!
Where else would you want him to be? On holiday like most other managers and most of the players?
And is his job 24hours a day? Even if he was on a TV gardening show isn’t he entitled to THREE hours off a day?
Sorry guys but i disagree,this is barry’s way of forcing vill to sell him.He has shown no respect to his cub or manager.take the 13m and have done with him.
I think Barry’s comments are disgraceful and really should not have come out in the press. It’s been clear for a good few weeks now that if Liverpool show us the money - they can have the player. Barry’s comments have not changed this situation but have ‘Villified’ him to our fans.
Everyone is being so impatient at the moment. Had it not been for Chelsea’s change of management - we would have already had our first signing. Calm down people. I’d rather MON spend more time on targets he really wants than wastes money on panic buys (Djemba Djemba anyone??)
Madladdy & Paul, totally agree with your comments.
Barry wants out and he’s having a pop because he know’s that Liverpool probably can’t afford our valuation.
I also think if people thought for a few seconds then reality would kick in and they’d realise that MON hasn’t gotten us this far just to let the squad diminish.
The fickleness of fans is too apparent and when players sign for us it’s expected and when they don’t it’s open season. In this day and age transfers are even more difficult as money tends to overpower ambition more that it ever has. Look at Diarra at Pompey. 90k a week?!?!?!?!
Keep The Faith folks.
re: comment 4, at no point was martin o’neills footballing knowledge or ability under the microscope, what was up for debate is the lack of transfer activity, and i’m sorry but i dont see what o’leary has to do with anything?
villa fell away last season when fifth and at one time maybe even fourth was within touching distance and we missed out due to lack of quality cover for players out injured or just exhausted (agbonlahor was a classic example of that)
if we blow our chance of uefa cup football lets see how many people are happy with that, it only takes a couple of injuries during pre-season training and one avenue of our season could be over before it starts
Do you want Freddy Eastwood and Stephen Elliot?
Its the same old story every transfer window,we are going to spend on quality and then o,neill comes out with the excuse that they are not avaliable.We have missed out on defoe,and others due to being slow off the mark to sign players,i predict we will end up with about 4 players and spend about 20m which will be thebarry money,for gods sake villa lets think big and reward the 40,000 supporters we had on average last season.
One player does not a team make , although disharmony can ruin team work . Gareth should have his bags packed by now (and live to regret it) . He’s good but not great because of his lack of explosive pace .
So on to a new season with colours flying . Believe .
Gareth Barry’s comments over the weekend have one purpose and one purpose only, and that’s to try and create the impression that he is in some way being forced out of Villa Park by lack of attention or will on the part of the club. Everybody knows that his head has been well and truly turned by the poisonuous antics of Liverpool, who want him at a lower than market value due to the parlous state of finances at Anfield. This outburst is just the latest cynical attempt to make Villa roll over and dance to Liverpool’s tune, and will be seen by most people for the laughably transparent attempt that it is to force the issue. What does Barry expect O’Neill to do to prove how much he values him? Urrm, give him more money, the club captaincy, European football, and help him to regain his England place? The fact is, Barry wants out, and O’Neill would just be wasting his time. If Barry had any bottle, he would just be honest and put in a transfer request, but then, that would mean foregoing yet more money, wouldn’t it? We all thought Barry was different, but he’s just another selfish mercenary. Get lost, Gareth, you’re a disgrace to the claret and blue shirt.
Martin O’Neill stated that Barry and his agent were invited to discuss various options, so where have they been in the last few weeks or so? It’s not on to slag Villa off for that. Maybe Barry should be asking himself why Liverpool have let him down given that he wanted to join them, and they wanted him. Liverpool seem to have gone into this expecting to get their man for far less than he’s worth. Somehow I can’t see them agreeing to sell their players at below value, so why expect Villa to do it? Also, we read about Liverpool having limited funds, perhaps to the point that they cannot really afford Barry, so if that is the case, what are they doing raising his hopes?
Unless we stick to our guns, 18 million, we are done for. Even if Barry has to stay it will show other players the strength of the Villa management, they will not be forced to sell, an event that will happen again and again If we allow Barry to go on the cheap. 18 million or no go
Barry’s an idiot for letting his head get turned on this liverpool saga.
He sees the whole champions league football as the key issue, mostly in maintaining his england place. Well lets show some prominent truths behind barry’s flawed logic.
1.) He forced Lampard out of the england team, a man playing regular champions league for chelski.
2.) Not everyone who plays champions league plays regularly for england, i.e. wright-phillips, crouch, etc. How can he assume being with a club that happens to be competing in the competition is the golden ticket when players like those don’t even play regularly in it.
3.) He got the chance to captain england because he is a club captain, have all of his brain cells shut down or does he not realise he can have even greater star power as a premiership captain, being the big fish in a small pond so to speak, that should boost his ego right there.
4.) On Rafa’s interest, well if he really thought barry was a good player why hasn’t he tried to come in for him before, barry should realise that this is typical of the top four clubs, certaintly benitez & liverpool. They don’t want cause he’s a good player, they want him cause the villa have him, we are a threat to them, it’s simply to keep clubs like us down, barry should know this if he was really an intelligent person which it appears he ain’t.
To be honest, since he’ll never think about like that, I say we let him go for the 18 mil if they pay, and watch him crash and burn, be stuck on the bench, lose his england place, be rotated at liverpool till his head explodes.
O’Neill needs to do it quick, but lets get sidwell and milner & have that young england midfield of these two alongside reo-coker and ash, with gardner aswell. We will create the next england midfield, and leave barry to rue the day he ever turned against the claret & blue army.
Up the Villa.