Steve Finnan plus £17m for Barry – Are they mad?

Aston Villa have come with an offer on the table if Liverpool want to sign Gareth Barry. The offer is simple, “Give us £17m and Steve Finnan and you can have Barry”. I had to just laugh at this proposal. Firstly, £17m is not even worth Gareth Barry, and now they want to ‘milk’ Finnan as part of the deal. You can say Finnan is valued at about £2m, that would mean Barry is worth £19m which is absolute nonsense. I hope Rafa does not give into Villa’s demands. I value Barry at £15m so if we pay anything above that I will not be too happy and that would mean Barry would have to do some super human things at Anfield this season to show us his true value.

I think Rafa should play a waiting game with Villa. Villa clearly need to sell Barry now that he doesn’t want to play for them. In property terms we would call this a ‘buyers market’ where we as the buyers can dictate the terms and price. So let’s write back a letter to Aston Villa and say we are offering you £15m and at the bottom in big red letter we should say “TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT!!!”