The pursuit of Gareth Barry has so far been horribly mismanaged – or so it would appear. Benitez started with a derisory offer which involved a mishmash of money plus player that apparently flummoxed O’Neill to the extent where he couldn’t work out what was actually going on. It is difficult to believe that this is entirely true, as Benitez himself seemed somewhat confused by the whole process.

O’Neill made the mistake of confirming the rumour, and since then everything has been about pressure directed at the player. Liverpool have made several offers, all below the asking price, and Villa have rebuffed them, holding out for the sum of £18million, a sum that Liverpool apparently can’t muster. Since then the press have made a lot of Barry’s desire to play Champions League football, whilst Steven Gerrard, the Liverpool skipper, more or less seems to have tapped his friend up.

So far so good and Villa can claim to be the wounded party in the whole affair, in fact they continued to do so up until the point that Barry came out and said that no one had ever spoken to him directly and asked him to stay. The implication was clear, the Villa captain wanted to move and when a player wants to go there is little a club can do to hold him back. That’s all very well but Liverpool and Villa still need to hammer out a fee.

They’ll do that, eventually. The problem is that Liverpool’s approach to the transfer market has been clumsy. They seem to be making awkward bids, often involving players moving in the other direction, and often well below the asking price. What’s more their approaches seem to come with a lot of media attention that basically says to the player, we are Liverpool, we are in the Champions League, ditch your club and come and play for us. The traditional approach of striking a deal with the club and then the player seems to have been given a miss, and has been replaced by offering a bad deal to the club, luring the player, and then trying to get the club to accept the reduced fee. It happened with Barry and now seems to be happening with Robbie Keane.

As for the ultimate whereabouts of Keane and Barry next season? According to Blue Square the likelihood is that Keane will stay at Tottenham, and if I was into football betting I would put money on that outcome, as for Barry it seems that his move to Liverpool is so likely that the bookies aren’t even taking bets on it.