Losing Gareth Barry is Not A Problem. Is it?
When questioned by Sky Sports this weekend about whether losing Gareth Barry for the next game is a problem, Capello’s response was ‘No’ and that he’d have to find a new solution. I couldn’t help but spot the pertinence of these words to us.
Martin O’Neill and Villa find themselves in this same position; needing to find a solution for the new-found lack of Barry. Where England have Frank Lampard, Steve Gerrard, Michael Carrick and David Beckham in the central midfield position, Villa have Steve Sidwell and Nigel Reo-Coker and others.
Nigel Reo-Coker
Villa signed NRC for £8.5m but last season he spent most his time on the bench and when he did play it was out of position. £8.5m seems a lot to pay for a utility player, so does this mean he will be filling Barry’s role next season? During the pre-Milner games, Reo-Coker played right midfield and showed an aptitude for attacking play, so could he be the yin to Petrov’s yang?
Steve Sidwell
Sidders was brought in for that familiar Villa fee; £undisclosed. The plan was for Sidders to replace Gareth Barry when he left for Liverpool. Neither happened. Barry stayed and Sidwell got injured.
On his recovery, Sidwell forced his way into the side as part of the notorious 4-5-1, that the fans loved but MON wasn’t so keen on and stubbornly refused to go back to it if he could help it. Sidwell had some good moments, scored some great goals, but then again got injured and disappeared from the team on his return.
Others
There is a feeling amongst some fans that James Milner could make the switch from right wing to central mdifield and do a good job there. It would mean a change to the focus of his game, looking to pick out clinical passes and penetrative through balls, as opposed to his runs down the wings and crossing (not his specialty anyway). Could he do it?
Craig Garnder has played in almost every position on the park for the first team, being used as more of a utility player than NRC! Gardner is a player who always gives 100% and certainly has ability, but does he have enough to be the new mainstay in the middle for Villa?
We also have Salifou and Osbourne but I can already imagine what you lot will think of them as solutions to this puzzle.
Newbie
The other option for us is to look elsewhere. There have been no shortage of names linked with us by the papers including Jenas, Huddlestone, Defour & Delph amongst many more.
What’s the answer for Villa then? Do we need to look around or take one of the internal propsects?
Villa contribution to England’s 4-0 win
When the squad was announced, Villa had 3 players in there; Gareth Barry, Ashley Young and Emile Heskey.
And at present, Aston Villa is the only club Gareth Barry has played for, so can we claim the first 2 England goals as Villa-related?
We also have a bunch of players who were knocking on England’s door earlier in the season; James Milner, Curtis Davies, Luke Young, Gabby Agbonlahor. But a drop in Villa’s form saw them slip from the squad. Will their times come again? It will if they get their heads back up on their shoulders and play to the ability we have seen them capable of.
The thing that I liked most yesterday though, was Emile Heskey’s position for his goal. He was poaching. And, hard as it might be for many to imagine, Heskey is a good finisher. Heskey’s reason that he isn’t very popular as a striker is that he rarely scores, but that is caused by the positions he gets into (too deep), rather than his ability to put the ball in the net.
There doesn’t seem to be anything you can do to make Heskey into a goal hanger though (a role that brought Michael Owen so much success). Last night he was the lone striker, but still he was often found in our own half. The way I see it, if you are playing just one striker, up top alone, you want him to stay there and always be available as an option for you when you attack. A lone striker to me should be there to poach a goal and/or finish off what the midfielders and wingers create.
Ashley Young didn’t see any minutes, but I don’t feel aggrieved by this the way I did earlier in the season. For months, Young was out-playing Stewart Downing every week and staking a valid claim for Joe Cole’s empty position, but he couldn’t convince Capello. But with his form for the second half of the season I won’t argue with him not playing.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we will see more Villans in the England squad next season as we get our confidence back. Come on Villans.
The £12m MUST be used to replace Laursen moreso than Barry
Villa’s cash from the sale of Gareth Barry to Man City has sparked rucks of rumours about players we will be bringing in to fill the void Barry has left in the centre of our midfield. But surely the more important thing is to use it to replace Martin Laursen as the primary objective.
In one fell swoop, the last few months have taken our captain and our ‘back up’ captain from us, never to return. But of the 2 positions I feel it is far more important that we concentrate on securing an inspirational, influential defender first. Martin Laursen was fundamental to the side and without him we failed to defendc strongly and there was no commanding presence in our box.
The loss of Laursen was catastrophic for us at the back. We have Curtis Davies, Zat Knight and Carlos Cuellar all available to play there, as well as Eric Lichaj and Ciaran Clarke if he wants to promote some of the youngsters, but of those we don’t have a leader. Martin Laursen was our captain and also a figure that lifted the other defenders along side him and in his absence we have suffered severely from this lacking.
In midfield we can fill Barry’s boots without having to shop around if the situation forced it and MON has dropped hints that this may be the case. Sidwell and NRC are both eager to take on the role and it is possible we will do just that.
Joleon Lescott appears to be the most mentioned name and personally I would be happy with that. The other name appearing to have some possibility is Thomas Vermaelen.
The important thing though is that a centre defender is brought in this summer and sooner rather than later. If push came to shove and we could only buy ONE player then it would have to be a centre back.
Aston Villa lose their backbone, how will they stand tall now?
Last summer it was THE transfer saga of the summer, the whole Gareth Barry to Liverpool story. It began early, prior to the window even opening, with Rafa Benitez stating an intent to sign the Villa midfielder. It royally pee’ed off Martin O’Neill and a public war of words began.
Liverpool made an offer, Villa rejected it. Liverpool made another offer, Villa rejected it again. Liverpool made yet another offer and, guess what, Villa rejected it yet again. It’s possible that more offers were made and rejected but by this time everyone was so bored and pigsick of it all that they just wanted it to be sorted out one way or another.
Villa (or should that be Martin O’Neill’s stubbornness) won the battle; Barry stayed at Villa. But it wasn’t as straightforward as that. Barry had spoken to the papers, saying that he wished to join Liverpool and he criticised Martin O’Neill while he was at it. This seemed like a risk-free thing to do, as he would be heading to Anfield any day now, so why not? But when that didn’t happen, Bazza found himself stripped of the captaincy, banned from the training ground and fined 2 weeks wages.
So what at first was an exciting face-off, then crescendoed into a frenzy of will-he-won’t-he, only to peter out and start to lose steam as it got tiresome and repetitive and then eventually it became downright boring. By the end, neither Villa fans nor Liverpool fans could give a damn whether he went or not, so long as the news spoke about something else. Y’know, kinda like how we currently feel about Susan Boyle and MP expense claims in the UK!
Finally, the window closed and Barry remained at Aston Villa. He realised he was stuck there, but it didn’t seem like he was exactly delighted by the situation, after falling out with the boss, losing the armband and then getting boo’d by the fans. He saw out the year, but it seemed very unlikely that he would stay at Villa to see out his contract.
Barry didn’t waste much time getting things into place, being announced today as the first signing of the transfer window. The rumours were abound for a while, but then it meant little as there was a rumour out there on the blogs and in the papers linking every half decent player the world over with Man City. Their endless bags of cash will ensure that rumours will swarm around them like flies around… errr… doo-doo!
It came out yesterday that Barry was in talks with City, but I doubt many expected it to all be wrapped up so quickly. It kind of makes you wonder if this was already half-arranged during the season.
Barry has gone back on his original reason for leaving Villa, which was an ambition to play Champions League football, to join a team that arguably has the same chance of reaching that goal as Villa. He has said that he wanted to join the Manchester club as they have ambitions that match his own, despite joining a team that aren’t in Europe at all but Villa being in the new Europa League.
Life without Barry
It will be odd to see us line up without Barry in the team, after being such a huge part of the team for a large part of his 12 years here and how we go about replacing him will be fundamental to whether we can continue to build on the success we have been enjoying since Randy Lerner purchased the club.
It was reported in the papers yesterday that Martin O’Neill has told Steve Sidwell and Nigel Reo-Coker that they will play much bigger roles for the club this coming season. This reeks of ‘I’m not going to replace Barry’ or maybe ‘I’ll replace Barry with a young up and coming player for the future’.
Sidwell has not proved too useful for us to date, so a big improvement from him would be required to keep us where we are, never mind grow.
Nigel Reo-Coker has shown promise for us, putting in good performances when he gets the chance, but he has generally worked best when alongside Barry. He may have it in him though, I have more faith that he could fill Barry’s boots than Sidders and he will like the chance to play as the more attacking one in the middle. So maybe NRC is the answer. Can you tell I’m more trying to talk myself into it than anything else?
Rumours about replacements will now be rife though, no matter what MON hints at, so we’ll take it as it comes, keep our fingers crossed and hope that Barry wasn’t as fundamental to our success as we fear. Cuz he’s gone now, he’s no longer an Aston Villa player (how weird is that?!).
I’ll swap you my Barry for your Bentley
It’s not altogether different from swapping Panini stickers in the playground, except that you don’t have to pay your stickers £50,000 a week once you have them!
I have heard a rumour that we are in talks with Spurs about a swap deal of Gareth Barry for David Bentley. I’m hoping it is just garbage, because it doesn’t seem to make too much sense. Well certainly not as a stand alone thing anyway.
Barry is a class central midfielder (albeit not originally, but he has definitely made the position his own now) who is near the top of his game and Bentley is a winger who is near the bottom of his game.
Barry is by far our best in his position, and we’d need to sign someone to replace him, whereas we are not in a desperate need for a winger. A back up would be good but there’s no point having a back up winger if you have no-one in the centre.
Barry is the captain and a central figure for our team, Bentley doesn’t get in his team and would struggle to get in ours, unless he recaptures his old form.
Barry is worth at least £10, Bentley would struggle to fetch 5, so I’m guessing if it does go ahead we would get some cash too.
The positive side
It seems that I’m not too keen on the idea doesn’t it? There are some positive ways to look at this though. It seems likely that Barry will be leaving us during the summer and it is also being rumoured that we will be buying Bentley, so I spose it makes sense to wrap them both up at once. I have also read in the past that Barry was a Tottenham fan when he grew up so it could appeal to him on those grounds. He will also like the fact that he will most likely get in the team every week, which is far from guaranteed at Liverpool.
I would also take it as a sign that we intend to do some big signings this summer; if we are going to spend around £5m on Bentley, someone who will largely be a back up winger, then surely it means we will also be splashing out for a centre back, a centre midfielder AND a centre forward. We need to replace Laursen and Barry and we still need a centre forward who can actually score goals, so if this goes through I see ambition (yeah, I know it could also mean that we will unambitiously make do with what we already have, but if you look up there, the title of this section is ‘The positive side’).
Also being said
There is also a rumour that Man City have offered us £10m for Barry. I think we may want around £12m and we have seen that MON will not be haggled down once before, but City could easily meet our valuation and pay Barry handsomely so that could throw this swapping lark out the window.
Wherever he goes though Barry needs to be replaced surely. Unless MON has big hopes for Salifou, Reo-Coker, Sidwell, Gardner or even Milner moved into the middle.
If these rumours are true, we could be in for a much less successful season next term, so enjoy this one while it lasts
It’s not exactly new information, but it is now time that it’s ugly head needs to be reared and dealt with as an imminent reality. The word on the street is that Randy Lerner is suffering due to the credit crunch and won’t be in a position to fork out for the players we so desperately need to continue our growth and to complete the job we were doing so well at for a large part of this season.
It is being suggested that we will need to sell in order to raise cash for transfers, with Harewood, Shorey, Knight and Gardner mentioned by the Express & Star.
Progress-wise I wouldn’t be averse to seeing them go, but I do have my reservations;
- Gardner is a great bloke to have in the squad as he will always give 100% and is very versatile
- Shorey is finally starting to look the part and there is no guarantee that Bouma will be able to rekindle his old form and fitness, so we could be left exposed at left back (which we all know would see Luke Young switched to there and a makeshift RB drafted in)
- Knight is a lifelong Villa fan, so as one myself, I will always have a bond with him, I concede that we would probably be better off cashing in though
- Harewood wouldn’t be a great loss but is doubtful to raise the kind of cash that would buy us anyone great
As mentioned though, none of these would bring us rakes of cash, so we’d probably only get one big player from selling all four of them and we have already shown that to grow, we need both a bigger and better squad.
You have to sympathise with Lerner in some ways; the guy has done some great stuff for the club so far and has raised us from a club who were struggling to stay in the top flight, to pushing on the Big Four and knocking on the Champions League’s door. But until we achieve that goal, the club will probably cost him more in transfers than he will make back and at the end of the day the guy is a businessman.
If we made it into the Champions League for a few seasons and started to progress in the competition, then he would be laughing, but he must be seeing that as a very big IF right now, with the US and the UK in financial struggles and his fortunes looking far from stable.
The irony is, that to get the kind of money we need, we’d have to sell the players who are most likely to get us there. You have to fancy that Barry will be going either way, which will bring us some money (not as much as last summer’s figure, but still not a bad figure) but also the rumours of Chelsea offering big money for Ashley Young could prove very tempting for Lerner.
The Champions League has distorted football since it’s inception, making the top clubs so much harder to compete with. If you can get into it you have much more chance of staying in it, but now that we have the Big Four situation here, it is going to take years for any club to properly get amongst them, even Man City will need time. How they can fix it is a whole-nother subject and all ideas have their downfalls. Maybe they could limit how much of the earnings can be spent on signing new players and paying wages, but as I say that’s another topic for another day.
So will he be willing to splash the cash this summer? Is his heart and faith strong enough to take the risk during a time of uncertainty or will he play it safe and risk the wrath of some fans?
But the big Villa transfer rumour around is…
Steven Defour.
Yes, I’m afraid that the Villa news is so limited that I needed to stretch a transfer rumours story over 2 days! Well, that is unless I wanted to tell you that Agbon has withdrawn from the U21s through injury but I’m sure you all already heard that yarn.
So who in the name of Jebus is Steven Defour?
Well, he currently plays for Standard Liege and is an attacking central midfielder. You can see where I’m going here can’t you? Yes, that’s right, he is being so closely linked with Villa as he is looking to be one of the most apt and able replacements for the long-serving but very-probably-soon-to-be-leaving Gareth Barry. Defour even has many a quality that Barry is lacking in, such as his goalscoring prowess. Maybe that’s not fair, because Barry, when happy at Villa and pre-falling-madly-in-love-with-Gerrard, was very capable of both scoring plenty and creating plenty of goals, but of late he has fallen from the golden boot rankings.
Anyway, Defour is a strong presence in the middle of the park and could possibly fit in with our style even better than Ole Bazza. I can see him and Ashley Young forging a partnership. It will take anyone time to be what Barry has become though, so don’t be too quick to judge.
Will it happen?
There’s no real reason to say it won’t, particularly when the player has already been speaking to the press about Villa, sort of pre-empting the speculation, but there is going to be a rumour about every-man-and-his-dog-who-can-play-central-midfield, so this one definitely stands out from the crowd as a possible (and pleasurable) reality.
[Apologies to all the regular readers who logged on today to find nothing. I've had such a hectic day, what with my real job being crazy and cleaning up piles of cat crap (don't ask!), that it's taken me till now to get this finished and spell checked, so sorry if it's now old news]
Or maybe we’ll get thrashed 5-0 (plus Fabio Capello’s Villans)
Yesterday was the first game of the season I haven’t watched (I took my dear old mom out for Mother’s Day) and I think I’m actually glad I missed it! Now I normally will re-arrange almost anything to make time to watch the boys (me and the wife even planned the date of our wedding around football fixtures!) but my brother booked the table and I could hardly say “Nah mom, I won’t be there cuz I wanna watch my crap-form team in a game they’ll most likely lose”. So I had my mates get on the text-case to keep me updated with the game. My battery almost died from the amount of dismal texts I got!
On top of the game sucking, the restaurant was freaking boiling and my little daughter cried almost the entire time, so all in all yesterday afternoon sucked big time! I’ve been told by my wife enough times that my mood is too heavily affected by Aston Villa, but a long face at a Mother’s Day meal was maybe a bridge too far! Oops. Sorry Mom.
I watched the highlights (make that lowlights) on MOTD and it looked like we gave a fair push in the first half but let ourselves down with poor mistakes; Nigel Reo-Coker being the main culprit. I was actually hoping he’d get a start, but not at right back. I was delighted to hear Carew got a start and it looks like he posed the most threat and will hopefully now start more. But I would’ve preferred to see him alone up top with NRC in a 5-man midfield. Surely MON knows that Liverpool are excellent in the middle and the only way we could even try to match them would be to outnumber them. Obviously not.
Heads down
We got thumped. We know. I’m sure that during the course of the day I will be reminded many times of this fact too. And now we go to Old Trafford with our heads well and truly down. The only comfort we can take there is that they are off form too. But before that…
Fabio Capello’s Villans
As would be expected, the England squad for the upcoming games is low on Villa players. With 6-7 of them having got in contention during Capello’s reign, he now overlooks almost all of them… and I can’t say I blame him. There’s no point taking players who are very low on confidence. Unfortunately it will only serve to kick them while they’re down, but Capello isn’t an Aston Villa motivational speaker, he’s an England manager.
Gareth Barry is in the squad which I fully agree with and right now he must be thinking that he can’t wait to get out of the Midlands. It will get better for Villa again Bazza, it may not be the next game but after that I expect normal service to be resumed. It won’t make any difference though, he’s as good as gone in my opinion. Only time will tell but I believe he’ll be a Liverpool player not long after the window opens.
The surprise in the England squad is Emile Heskey. Most Villa fans can’t see why he still gets in the Villa team, never mind play for his country. But I suppose, as I’ve said, it’s not that I think Heskey isn’t a good player, he just doesn’t fit into the Villa team. Maybe Capello has a plan to utilise his potential better than we do.
Heads up
But try to take defeat graciously Villa fans, this glitch won’t last forever. And even if we end up 5th it’s still a step forward from last season. Even 6th wouldn’t be a step backwards, though it will definitely feel like one after flying so high at points.
So heads up Villans, we have achieved a lot to be able to disappointed at being 5th.
Carrroooooooooooooooooooo is gonna start & Barry will be on his best behaviour
Villa travel to Merseyside on Sunday for a 4pm kick off with the Reds and we go into it with confidence on the floor. But 2 boosts come ahead of the game to give us Villa fans a little hope; John Carew looks set to be handed a start and Gareth Barry will be out to impress.
Carew first
Martin O’Neill has been interviewed and if you read between the lines, it surely means that he intends to get Carew off the bench and onto the pitch, hopefully in place of Heskey, who has not yet found a way to fit in with our team and seems to have hindered us by changing or our style of play. Maybe during the summer we can find a place for Heskey, as he gets used to us, but for the remainder of the season, I’d be happy not to see him start another game. We need to get back to winning ways.
Here’s what MON said, and unless I’m just taking from it what I want to hear then it sounds like he’s suggesting Carew will start:
“The great thing about it is that John Carew now is getting really properly fit. He played nearly a full game up at Everton in the absence of Emile Heskey in the FA Cup. Now, in the little training sessions that he has been doing recently, he has been really sharp. He is really raring to go, which is great.
“The two goals he has got after coming on as a substitute will also have given him a big boost of confidence. It is great to see him back when, in actual fact, you probably thought that it might have been really hard work coming back from the injury.
“John coming back and firing and going well with confidence high is great. I think that will be a major boost to us. Now Emile Heskey has come in and started very brightly at Portsmouth. Yes, he is feeling his way a little bit but that is not a problem.
“To have the three centre forwards there and available can only boost us from now until the end of the season – if they stay fit.”
Four. Five. One.
Still on Carew, I’d like to see him start as the lone striker on Sunday. Two reasons why; firstly, that was the formation that worked for us, we got great results with it and even ground out wins when we weren’t having a good day and secondly, because it can’t do any harm against a team like Liverpool to have plenty of bodies in the middle of the park.
Whether Sidwell gets back into the team or Reo-Coker or Gardner gets the place, I don’t really mind which (probably leaning slightly towards Coker), just so long as we see the 4-5-1 again. Come on Marty, read this blog and trust the author, not your own years of experience.
Gareth Barry
The rumours are (as we expected) already rife about Rafa coming back in for Barry this summer, and with Villa very unlikely to do as well in the Champions League as ‘Pool if we qualify, Barry is very likely to have his heart set back on the move he wanted last summer. The word on the street is that Rafa will be given the funds to secure Barry this time around so I doubt he will be a Villa player in 6 months time and this game he will see as his chance to show his new fans what he’s made of.
It’ll be a very sad day (for me and a large proportion of Villa fans) when Barry goes, but I think we need to start accepting it now, otherwise we’ll have to set up helplines, like when Take That split up 
Predictions
I honestly think we can come away with a point. I won’t be so daring to suggest we’ll win, but I think we’ll up our game against the big teams in these next 3 games and I see Sunday as a 1-1. Anyone else wanna venture a prediction? Or don’t you dare tempt fate!
‘The Gareth Barry Saga – Part 2′ is set to be even bigger than the first one
Where does the future lie for Gareth Barry?
It’s no secret that Villa will lose Gareth Barry at the end of the season if we don’t make it into the Champions League and now as the shadows of doubt appear on our chances, the rumours begin to fly around.
The new addition to the fray this summer will be Manchester City, with Mark Hughes naming Bazza and John Terry as his main targets. Myself I can’t see him getting either. Terry seems happy at Chelsea and even if he did move I can’t see it being to a club that are yet to qualify for the Champions League. The same condition would apply for Barry.
Barry made it very clear that he wanted to join Liverpool for their Champions League status and if we can secure that this season that he’ll stay with us. I honestly think he secretly hopes we don’t make it.
Not that I think Barry dislikes us, I think he has enjoyed the time he’s spent with us but now that he has improved so much and become recognised as a quality player he has raised his ambitions and wants to play for a Champions League side that will compete to win the competition. Which he doesn’t see us as.
If (and that is still a big task) we qualify, we will really struggle to get far in the competition in our first season in there. O’Neill’s plans are not to win the Champions League next season but simply to qualify for it. By qualifying we can build the squad and then aim to be successful in it a few seasons in. It’s a long term plan is O’Neill’s.
But Barry is thinking shorter term.
The clock is ticking for Barry and he doesn’t have as much time to spare as MON, which will most likely see him join Liverpool (or Arsenal if they come back in for him) this summer.
Barry leaving would really throw a spanner on the works for us, as he will be very difficult to replace. Even if we do manage to entice a player of equal quality as Barry, he won’t know how to play with us like Barry does. Barry has been with us so long that he is part of the furniture on the pitch. New players come in and play around him moreso than he learns to play with them, so a newcomer may well get to grips over time but we won’t be as good without Barry for a few months at the very least.
It’s also a bit of a catch-22 because CL football is about the only way we could entice a player of Barry’s class but it’s also the only yardstick by which he’ll commit to stay.
This is only the beginning of this one. It’s going to roll and roll, you watch.
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