Aston Villa Football Club News

• Nickname:The Villains
• Founded:1874
• Manager:Alex McLeish

• Ground:Villa Park
• Capacity:42,584

Villa insist no move for Barry

30 Jul 2008 - 23:11:33

Click To Enlarge

Aston Villa insist that Gareth Barry is staying with the club and is not on the verge of signing for Liverpool.

Earlier in the day several media outlets insisted Villa had accepted an offer of more than £17million plus Steve Finnan for Barry from the Reds.

However, a statement on Villa's official website on Wednesday read: "This evening, Aston Villa can announce that Gareth Barry will be staying with the club following the interest from Liverpool over recent months.

"During discussions in the past few days, a final deadline to conclude this episode was set that all parties were aware of and agreed to. This deadline has now passed and so Gareth will remain with Villa."

Liverpool have been chasing Barry for most of the summer but Villa boss Martin O'Neill had said at the weekend: "Having not heard anything from Liverpool for some time it's clear we value him more than they do.

"The fact they haven't answered us for a week sends out a real message.

"We obviously don't want him to go, so the price we're asking is a fair and realistic one for a player who's so good. In fact I think it's really cheap.

"My own view is that he should hang around for another year and see if we can make further progress as he would want.

"He's been with us for ten years and the crowd reaction was really strong in his favour. I don't think there's any doubt about what we all want at Villa Park. We want him to stay at the club.

"I'm not in the habit of encouraging players to talk to me after games but I told Gareth he'd been terrific.

"You could see, with hardly any training, how brilliant he was. We need him at this club. He would be a terrific loss for us."