Aston Villa manager Martin O'Neill is refusing to budge in the Gareth Barry transfer tug of war after warning Liverpool he will only sell the England midfielder for 18 million pounds (22.6 million euros).
O'Neill has turned down four bids of up to 15 million pounds (18.8 million euros) from Liverpool for the Villa captain and even wrote to the Anfield club to spell out his position.
Barry's attempts to force O'Neill's hand by publicly demanding a move cut little ice with the Villa boss, who fined the player and banned him from the training ground after he criticised O'Neill in a Sunday newspaper article.
O'Neill would consider taking Liverpool defender Steve Finnan as part of the deal, although the clubs disagree over the Republic of Ireland international's valuation.
With Liverpool struggling to raise the cash to meet O'Neill's fee, the saga has reached a stalemate, which only Benitez and his board can resolve according to O'Neill.
“We're still waiting to hear back from Liverpool after putting that proposal to them,” O'Neill said.
“It's really up to Liverpool. I really don't know how it's going to work out at the moment. I'm sure there will be some sort of resolution at some stage or another.”
Its obvoius O’Neill is just trying to frustrate liverpool from signing Barry, so liverpool should just forget about him. He’s too expensive for that amount and he’s not better than Alonso. I hope the juve deal does not work out so that we can still have our dear Alonso with us. Barry stands to gain more from us than us from him. He can’t play champions league without us, but we can without him. So O’Neill should keep his Barry and watch us win trophies this coming season without him.