Villa set to win Sidwell race

Steve Sidwell is set to become Villa’s first summer signing for £5.5m from Chelsea in the next 48 hours.

The former Reading man is now believed to have met new Chelsea boss Felipe Scolari, who has told him he can move on.

Villa are now ready to offer the player a four-year deal worth around £45,000 a week once he and his agent reach settlement on his Chelsea contract, which has two years to run and is worth around £60,000 a week.

Boss Martin O’Neill flew out with his 21-man squad today on the club’s two match Swiss tour. But he is ready to jet back at a moment’s notice to complete the deal.

With the Sidwell transfer poised to go through, O’Neill will be happier at the prospect of seeing an end to the long-running Gareth Barry saga.

The Villa boss has now contacted Liverpool with a proposal of a player-plus-cash deal for Barry which would see his £18m demands met.

“Liverpool have come back to us and we have responded to their proposal with a letter,” said O’Neill.

“We’re still waiting to hear back from Liverpool after putting that proposal to them.

“I’m not putting down markers that can’t get removed at this stage.

“It’s really up to Liverpool. I really don’t know how it’s going to work out at the moment.”

O’Neill is confident of completing several deals in the coming weeks.

“You’re talking about replacing Thomas Sorensen, Scott Carson, Olof Mellberg, Patrik Berger and Luke Moore,” he said.

“I’d be pleasantly surprised if every single thing that I’m planning comes into play, but there are many things on the go.

“We need players and we know what we have to do.

“We’re continuing to work on other deals. We have many things going on at this moment.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we’ve got a small squad and we don’t really want to be going into this season facing up to games with what we had on the pitch being what we have.

“We were lucky last season that a lot of players really stepped up their games and eight players playing 30 League games or more.”